
Class. 
Book. 



/ J 



Copyiightl^^ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSnV 



TWENTY TALKS 



TEACHERS 



BY 

THOMAS E. SANDERS 



AUTHOR OF 



Management and Methods," "Opening Exercises for Schools 

"An Outline Guide to Civil Government," 

"Outline of Arithmetic," 

"The Sanders Report Card" 



THE TEACHERS CO-OPERATIVE COMPANY 

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 






LiSKARY otCUNGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

^0¥ 30 1808 

Copyriftit Entry ^ 
OUSS C\^^XXc. No. 
COPY d. 



Copyrighted, 1908 
Thomas E. Sanders 



PREFACE. 

Twenty Talks to Teachers is an epitome of some 
of the discussions used by the author in teachers' insti- 
tutes. It is not a profound book. It was not intended 
to be. Its object is to call the attention of young teachers 
to some of the every day conditions and problems which 
they must solve for themselves. The average term of 
service of teachers is little over three years, hence the 
great mass of teachers are young in service. A number 
of these have expressed themselves as being pleased with 
the discussions in institutes, especially so because they 
were plain homely talks rather than learned discussions. 
Perhaps these and others may appreciate them as well 
in the printed form. 

No one is expected to agree with all that is said. If 
the topics are suggestive to young teachers, if the book 
helps them over a>few of the hard places, if it sets them 
thinking on some topics, if the advice that is given proves 
sound, and if it should encourage a few to deeper study, 
better preparation and broader reading, it will have done 
well. Trusting that it may form the basis of profitable 
discussions in teachers' institutes and meetings it is sub- 
mitted to the great body of young teachers whose zeal, 
enthusiasm and optimism, has done so much in the past, 
is doing yet, and will continue to do so much for our 
schools and out of whose work must grow in the future 
a worthy profession of teaching. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

CHAPTER I. 
Am I Fit to Teach ? 7 

CHAPTER H. 
Shall Teaching be My Life Work ? 14 

CHAPTER HI. 
Securing a Position 21 

CHAPTER IV. 
Passing the Examination 31 

CHAPTER V. 
Problems of the Young Teacher 36 

CHAPTER VI. 
Grading a School 44 

CHAPTER VII. 
Opening Exercises 55 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Spirit of the Teacher 63 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Teacher's Library 70 

CHAPTER X. 
The Teacher Outside the Schoolroom 80 

CHAPTER XI. 
Good Teaching Conditions 90 

. CHAPTER XII. 
Keeping Good Conditions 96 

CHAPTER XTII. 
What Makes a Good School ? 105 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Ten Time Killers 116 

CHAPTER XV. 
The Value of a High School Course 125 

CHAPTER XVI. 
A Talk About Spelling 132 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Arithmetic in the School 142 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Teaching Literature I53 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Teacher's Vacation 166 

CHAPTER XX. 
The Teacher's View of Life 172 



CHAPTER I. 

AM I FIT TO TEACH? 

The talks that follow are addressed to young teachers. 
They treat everyday problems in a homely way. I have 
tried to be plain and pointed. I have omitted long 
terms. I do not speak of correlation, apperception, spon- 
taneity, etc., and I omit long psychological terms. You 
get enough of these in county institutes and educational 
journals. 

You are a school teacher. You have taught but a short 
time, and you want to make a success of the work. You 
may not be even a professional teacher. You hold neith- 
er a normal school diploma nor a life license. Both of 
these are good, and a desire for one or both upon your 
part would be commendable, but neither is all that is re- 
quired to teach a successful school. Some of the most 
impractical of visionary dreamers I have ever known 
possessed the first, and the most tiresome of moss-backs 
the second. Given a young man or a young woman of 
good character and fair scholarship, desiring to teach 
school, with little or no professional study or training, 
yet anxious to succeed, what may I say to help them? 
What are the problems which they must face ? What ad- 
vice and what cautions will they need, and how may I 
say this to be most effective ? This is my task. 

Perhaps a little self-catechising on your part will be 
helpful. In the daily hour of self-communion — and each 
teacher should have such an hour — when you turn your 
thoughts inward and analyse your own motives and short- 
comings, ask yourself in all seriousness: "Am I fit to 
teach?" You may not be a "born teacher." Very few 



» TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

persons are. Few indeed have the inborn qualities so 
strong that teaching and teaching alone will satisfy. Few 
are so heavenly inspired that they may teach and succeed 
at it in defiance of all rules or regulations or accepted 
laws of pedagogy. There are some qualities that will 
help you and some qualities that you may cultivate — 
qualities that are essential to the person who would as- 
pire to be leaders and models for young people. What 
are some of these? 

I. Your character must he above reproach. — What- 
ever else you may lack, your character must be above 
suspicion. Character, unquestioned and unquestionable, 
first. Other things may be essential, but this is the one 
first essential. If you are to be the model after which 
the boys and the girls — the most priceless product of the 
state^ — will both consciously and unconsciously fashion 
their lives, you must be in all things a worthy model. 
Pure thoughts, pure words, sincerity, honesty, earnest 
and deep convictions must be habitual with you. The 
purity of your own thought, the sincerity of your own 
motives, flashing through your eyes, the windows of your 
soul, must call out and strengthen the purity and nobility 
of other minds. Your character and your reputation, 
too, must stand the search light of the X-ray without 
showing flaw or blemish. This, and this alone, is the 
character and reputation worthy the teacher, the builder 
and architect of immortal minds. 

Character is what you are; reputation is what others 
think you are. Character is essential to pure manhood 
and pure womanhood, but reputation also is essential 
to the teacher. Reputation cannot exist long without 
character, but if from any cause however unjust your 
reputation is lost even though character remain, your best 
usefulness in that immediate community is gone. Then 



AM I FIT TO TEACH? 9 

guard well your life if you are to teach. Avoid not only 
evil but the appearance of it. Be not prud:sh, but keep 
your reputation unsullied or seek not to stand as teacher 
to the young. 

2. A thorough knozvledge of the subject taught is es- 
sential to success. — You cannot be a successful teacher of 
the things you do not know. Clear-cut, definite, specific 
knowledge of a subject cannot be obtained in the pupils 
when the teacher does not have it. You cannot success- 
fully teach up to the limit of your knowledge. There is 
a margin between your teaching limit and your knowing 
limit. As you reach your knowing limit in class, your 
questions become hazy, indefinite, crude. You hesitate, 
you stammer, you repeat yourself, you thresh over and 
over again the same thought. You lack proper perspect- 
ive, and your teaching becomes dry and tiresome. A 
thorough and systematic knowledge of the subject you 
teach will give you teaching power. 

Then, too, your teacher's knowledge of the subject 
must be broader ajid deeper and better organized than the 
pupil's. You must see each subject in its proper relation 
to other subjects. Each chapter must be seen in its rela- 
tion to the chapters which precede and follow it in the 
development of the subject. The pupil's knowledge of a 
subject may end with the gathering and the understand- 
ing of facts, but the teacher's knowledge must include 
this and add to it the knowledge of its deeper relations 
to other subjects and to mind growth. To teach a sub- 
ject is to learn that subject anew, to see it in a new 
light, in a deeper and richer significance. You cannot 
as teacher reach your own highest success with but a 
student's knowledge and view of the subject you teach. 
You must have a connected and logical view of the sub- 
ject as a whole, and also an intimate and accurate knowl- 



lO TWENTY TALKS TO TEACH PZRS. 

edge of the relations of the parts. This deeper and 
broader knowledge, properly focused and presented to 
pupils gives you strength as a teacher. The deeper, the 
broader, the more accurate the knowledge of the subject, 
the better the teaching, provided the teacher has tact to 
present it properly. You must focus your efforts and 
bring your teaching into the range of the pupil's mental 
capacity and in an organized form so that pupils may 
grasp it. You must stick to the subject, remembering 
that the minimum of your knowledge of the subject with- 
out review will probably be the pupil's maximum after 
study. 

J. You must keep your knozvledgc fresh by study. — 
Growing minds alone are fit to teach. Stale mental stock 
does not create fresh mental appetites. Your attainments 
are of less importance than your mental habits. To 
teach well you must keep growing. Scholarly habits are 
more important than ripe scholarship with sluggish hab- 
its. Young teachers often do the best work. They are 
thinking, investigating, growing. They are full of life 
aiul enthusiasm, and the spirit is contagious with their 
pupils. The teacher who is accurate in details without 
being tiresome will train pupils to accuracy, unconscious- 
ly perhaps, but successfully. The young teacher faces 
the future with faith, and hope and enthusiasm. He is 
looking to the sunrise and not to the sunset. He is win- 
ning laurels, not resting upon laurels already won. He 
is losing his life in his work and will find it again in the 
lives of his pupils. Should I choose an institution for 
myself or for others, I should choose an institution in 
which a majority of the faculty were yet young men, 
men making reputations rather than men who had made 
reputations. The hope and faith, the fire and enthusiasm, 
the energy and earnestness, which they bring to their 



AM I FIT TO TEACH r ii 

work accomplishes more than men resting on their ac- 
compHshments can possibly accomplish. 

You must carry on some line of study or investigation, 
or systematic reading, or else you must fossilize fast. 
This, when dealing with immature minds year after year, 
is your only hope. It may be mathematics, it may be 
history, it may be science, sociology, political economy, 
music or art, it matters very little what the subject is, 
but it must be something, and it must be pursued reg- 
ularly, systcmatkally and persistently. In no other way 
can you keep growing and not be lost in the educational 
ruts. When you cease to grow you begin to decay. 

4. You must love the zuork of teaching. — If after a 
fair trial you do not love to teach and feel deep down in 
your own consciousness that you cannot learn to love it, 
quit by all means and do it at once. No one is fit to teach 
who finds the work thoroughly distasteful and who 
does not have a genuine love for children and young 
people. No sadder sight was ever seen than a long-faced 
pessimist in the school-room. It is cruelty personified to 
keep children in the school-room under the chilling, 
blighting influence of a sour-grained pessimistic teacher, 
long since dead, else never alive to the beauty of nature 
and the buoyancy of childhood — firmly convinced of the 
total depravity of all children. Teachers should be full 
of health, beauty and good cheer. They must be able 
to enlist the good-will, co-operation and sympathy of 
young people. Children should not look to teachers as 
masters to drive them to tasks and to exact penalties, but 
as friendly companions and leaders, with strength of 
character, and force enough to inspire, to guide, and to 
direct to higher and purer and nobler things. Teachers 
must be able to see the beauties and harmonies of nature 
all about them, and to lead pupils to feel and to appre- 



12 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

ciate the higher things of life, ever looking upward, lift- 
ing upward and pointing upward. 

5. You must be sincere. — You must love your work 
and believe in it. You must have a burning desire to 
help young people, and faith in your ability to do so. 
Gushing and lip service will not suffice. The smcere 
teacher is always ready to serve. Your actions will 
speak louder than words. You will as a rule be in no 
hurry to leave the building after school in the evening, 
but ready and willing and anxious to consult, to help, to 
advise, to be of service. The primary teacher's success 
may be judged by the group of children that circle about 
her at recess, or that wait to go home as she goes. The 
sincere teacher is found at teachers' meetings and asso- 
ciations, ready to help and on time. If you are genuinely 
sincere in your profession you will own a few professional 
books and add to them yearly. You will take and read 
educational journals and periodicals, and find pleasure in 
the reading. You will be found in the summer schools 
and colleges gaining help and inspiration for your work. 
You will have faith in the profession of teaching, and 
faith in yourself, and in your ability and worthiness to 
be one of the leaders of the youth of our land. 

6. You must possess a worthy ambition. — You are a 
poor teacher if you have reached the height of your ambi- 
tion, intellectually, professionally or successfully. If you 
are content or satisfied with your work, you will let 
things drag. You should be ambitious to do the best 
work of any teacher in your community. You ought to 
be ambitious enough also to desire better facilities for 
teaching and broader opportunities. We regret the itin- 
eracy and lack of stability in the teaching profession. It 
is one of the problems of the day. But all this is better 
than a body of teachers thoroughly content with condi- 



AM I FIT TO TEACH? ^3 

tions as they are. The teacher content to adjust himself 
to the conditions of a certain community and cloister him- 
self there for life at a minimum salary is lacking in the 
ambition to do the best work for himself or others. The 
teacher who has ambition enough to improve and who 
seeks to do his best because it is right and because he 
desires to advance in his profession will kindle higher 
ambitions in his pupils and build higher types of men 
and women. A worthy ambition, a proper rating of your 
worth, pluck and stamina to stand for your rights, but 
to do it decorously and properly, is essential to your best 
work as a teacher. 

Ask yourself, seriously and earnestly, "Am I fit to 
teach?" 



CHAPTER IL 

SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK? 

Shall teaching be my life work? This question 
stares the sincere young teacher squarely in the face. He 
must answer it sooner or later. His answer means much 
to himself as well as to others. We speak of the pro- 
fession of teaching, but in the truer sense we have none 
at present. Teaching may be "the noblest of profes- 
sions and the sorriest of trades," but as long as our stand- 
ards of entrance are so low and the number of exits 
so many, teaching cannot be in its strictest sense a pro- 
fession. It is far behind medicine or law, and to a 
large number of persons it is only a trade or a temporary 
occupation. 

There are professional teachers. There are persons 
who have spent time and money and mental energy 
studying the problems of the school and of education. 
There are persons who seek earnestly to formulate the 
truths and to reduce teaching to a science. Many of 
these truths are as clearly worked out, as reliable and 
as completely accepted as are many of the principles 
of law and medicine. The work is yet incomplete. 
Shall I make it a life work and give to it my life and 
the best that is in me? This is the question. 

No man can answer this question for you. It is 
personal. The best that can be done, and this is worth 
while, is to weigh the good and the bad features and 
leave you to choose for yourself. So much depends 
upon the individual. Let me say also that it is never 
too late to mend. I am one who believes that there 
are thousands of good teachers, persons who are teach- 



SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK r ^5 

ing and doing it well, persons who are leaving their 
impress for good upon boys and girls, and young men 
and young women, and who will not make teaching 
their life-work, and have never intended to do so. They 
arc teaching now, and they are, for the time being, 
putting their best self into the work. So long as they 
live in the work and get life out of it nothing is lost. 
When they begin to slight it, turning their energy to 
law or medicine or business, when their best self goes 
to something else while they become "school keepers" 
instead of teachers, it is time for them to quit. 

And what about the lady teachers? Are they to 
make it a life work too? That is also a question for 
the individual. To this large and growing class of 
zealous, capable and untiring teachers the present and 
the future owes a debt which the world can scarcely 
pay. There is bul one more sacred place — the wife and 
mother's. The 'woman who quits teaching to become 
the center of the home — the purest, the noblest, the most 
sacred — she does not leave the profession. She is only 
promoted. 

Let us look at the ugly side of the profession first. 

/. It is itinerate. — The best teacher in the best school 
in the best county in the best state can hardly hope 
to live and die in the same position. He cannot de- 
pend entirely upon teaching and plan and build a home, 
plant his trees and feel confident he will rest beneath 
their shade and eat their fruit in years to come. He 
may be ever so conscientious, he may be ever so capa- 
ble, and in time he must change. The position will 
outgrow him or he will outgrow the position. He will 
spank the wrong boy or refuse to spank him — it matters 
not — sooner or later he will do what the powers that 
be at the time think is the wrong thing, and then he 



l6 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

must go. To the real lover of the settled home, this 
is a serious drawback. Professionally it may not be 
so serious as it seems. If you expect to teach as a life 
work you must expect to change every few years either 
because you choose to change or because you must. 
From the standpoint of your own professional advance- 
ment I should advise you to move just awhile before it 
becomes necessary. There are always places open, and 
they are often more easily secured while things are 
pleasant in your present position. 

2. The money returns from teaching is less than in 
law, medicine, or business. — The same amount of energ^y 
and ability used in teaching would frequently bring many 
times its money returns in other things. The success- 
ful lawyer or physician often makes several times the 
amount in a year that the superintendent of his schools 
makes. So far as I know the highest salaried educa- 
tional position in the United States is only ten thousand 
a year. It is a very common thing to find a physician 
whose income is more than that. Hundreds of attor- 
neys may be found receiving many times this amount 
as salary, and ten thousand a year is not now consid- 
ered a large salary for the heads of business firms. 

J. The energy used is great. — Probably few other 
positions require a greater amount of energy constant- 
ly. It is the little things which sap the life of the teach- 
er — the constant strain, the nervous tension, the mag- 
netism going out continuously, the half fear it may be 
that something will go wrong. 

4. It is narrozving mentally. — Except in the highest 
college or university positions the teacher is dealing 
with persons less mature, less intellectual, and in one 
sense inferior. This is apt to cause him to grow dic- 
tatorial, pedantic and conceited. It is often an excel- 



SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK? i7 

lent thing for the teacher to come in contact with su- 
periors, to run against business men in a business man- 
ner, and learn other peoples' estimate of himself. To 
have some minor occupation — something besides teach- 
ing, interesting but not all-absorbing, is often a boon 
to the teacher. It keeps him from ruts and grooves 
and from fossilizing professionally. The lawyer, the 
business man and the physician are often rubbing against 
their equals and superiors, and this is a thought-awakener 
to them which the teacher often misses. 

5. Teaching is for the young. — Teaching is a young 
man's profession. With a number of notable exceptions, 
the great mass of teachers are under fifty. The teacher 
who has not made more than a local reputation be- 
fore he is fifty years old will find it hard to advance 
if he must change. Hard as it may be upon the ear- 
nest, conscientious, hard-working teacher, most of us 
if compelled to choose between a man of fifty and a 
man of thirty would, if other things were equal, choose 
the man of thirty. . The successful physician at fifty may 
have shorter office hours, charge larger fees and have 
cases coming to him for consultation because of his age 
and experience. The lawyer at fifty is in his prime. 
To him his clients come to consult upon important cases. 
Minor and unimportant cases he turns over "to the boys." 
But it is different with the teacher at fifty. Every one 
is then trying to put him on the shelf, and the chances 
are they will succeed. 

These are the things which make against teaching 
as a life work, but the picture has a brighter side — a 
side too often overlooked in this day of dollar chasing. 

/. Teaching pays at least a comfortable living from 
the very first. — Hundreds of persons enter it because of 
this fact, and many remain for life because of their 



l8 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

love for the work. The doctor and the lawyer must 
go through a starvation period, and many of them do 
not survive it. The lawyer that pays his necessary ex- 
penses and lives comfortably from his fees during the 
first five years is on the high road to success. The 
same is equally true of the physician. To tide over 
this starvation period many take up side lines which 
prove fatal to their real success, while others find sub- 
ordinate salaried places in firms and incorporations. 
The salary in teaching may be low, but it is specific 
and certain, and meets present needs. 

2. Teaching keeps you in close touch with the best 
people. — Nothing is more conducive to pure thoughts 
and upright conduct — not even the ministry. To be 
looked at as a model and as a guide by the boys and 
girls of a community day after day — if that does not 
inspire to noble thoughts and actions, what will? A 
father and mother can see their son or daughter leave 
home to teach with every assurance that no other occu- 
pation will be a higher incentive to pure thinking and 
perfect living. The best people of the community wel- 
come them to their home, the churches invite them to 
take part, and simple, trusting childhood in its purity, 
looks to them for guidance. If this does not keep them 
in paths of virtue they must show signs of total de- 
pravity. Do not overlook the fact when choosing a 
life work, that for personal purity, high ideals and con- 
stant inspiration to the highest, the purest and the best 
of our natures, teaching is unsurpassed. 

5. Hours are shorter than in many occupations. — 
While the nerve strain is great and worry and fear 
often intrude, the teacher has more time than many 
other occupations. Exercise and recreation in the open 
air an hour a day or more is always possible. If one 



SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK? ^9 

likes to garden, to raise chickens, or to tend flowers, 
they can find the time, and the recreation will be bene- 
ficial. Teachers complain of the long hours and hard 
work partly from habit and partly because they do 
not know the long hours and real hardships of other 
occupations. To the person who is prepared to teach 
and who has the gift or power to govern and control 
without worrying about it, or having to continually fight 
for it, teaching is not exhaustive drudgery. It is true, 
lessons must be looked over and work planned outside 
of school, but even then there is some time for relaxa- 
tion and recreation. 

4. The rewards are many. — In a sense, most teach- 
ers teach for the money — that is, if they were not paid 
for it very few could afford to give their time to the 
work. The laborer is worthy of his hire, and yet may 
the Lord pity the person and his pupils if he teaches 
for monev alone. The money will enable him to con- 
tinue the work, and it should be ample enough to give 
a comfortable living with all of the necessaries of life 
and a few of the luxuries. It should be ample also 
to provide for improvement and for necessary accesso- 
ries to carry on the work and to lay by enough for old 
age or a rainy day. But the money received from 
teaching sinks into insignificance with the real teacher 
when compared with the real pleasure one can get from 
his work, the good he can do, the love and trust and 
confidence of his pupils. These, with the uplift and 
noble aspirations which he can inspire with its volumes 
of sunshine and gladness and progress which his teach- 
ing may bring about are infinite. To have pupils group 
about you, to see them cross the street sheepishly it may 
be but for no other purpose than to speak to "teacher," 
to share their troubles, to increase their joys, to lead 



30 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

them to see more of the beauty and the harmony all 
about them and to receive their letters in later life 
confessing their faults, begging pardon for offenses you 
have long since forgotten, telling you of successes, shar- 
ing little secrets and asking your advice — all these are 
the rewards of every true teacher beside which the mon- 
ey received is insignificantly mean. 

5. The work is intellectual. — It keeps you in con- 
tact with books and the best minds of all ages. The 
greatest men of all time come and converse with you. 
A pity it is if you see nothing but drudgery and dull 
pupils and hard lessons and unruly boys and petty mis- 
chiefs and little annoyances in teaching. If this is all 
you see, quit — never teach again. 

Teaching, if your heart is in the work, will keep you 
young. It will bring you into contact with the best 
in life. It will be a constant inspiration to pure thought 
and right conduct. It will give you the love and re- 
spect of young people whose future joys and sorrows 
will be your joys and sorrows, and whose successes will 
bring you pleasure. Last and least, but nevertheless 
essential, it will remunerate you until by thrift and econ- 
omy you may lay up enough to live a comfortable, even 
though it be a simple, life. 



CHAPTER III. 

SECURING A POSITION. 

The problem of securing a position concerns not 
only the young teacher, but often the experienced teach- 
er as well. Thousands of young persons begin the 
work of teaching for the first time each year. The se- 
curing of the first school is usually a red-letter day for 
most persons who are really anxious to teach. Most 
boards of education and school officials hesitate to em- 
ploy a teacher who has had no experience. It is one of 
the conditions to be met in all occupations. Often prin- 
cipals and older teachers are loudest in their demands 
that only the experienced be employed, forgetting that 
there was a time when they themselves were without 
experience. For a subordinate place where there is not 
too much executive work, I should prefer the young 
person well prepared to the teacher who has so much 
experience that they feel that they know all that is 
needed to be known. 

Most young persons, unless they have a good pro- 
fessional course to begin with, teach first near their 
home. The time is coming, and let us hope coming 
rapidly, when one or two years of professional study 
must precede any attempt at teaching. It will be well 
for the pupils, well for the schools and, in the long run, 
well for the teachers themselves. Natural ability being 
equal, the young teacher who has a year or more of 
professional study has a decided advantage. This pro- 
fessional study gives clearer ideas of school and higher 
ideals of what should be accomplished. When s9hool 
officials and communities insist on professional prepara- 



22 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

tioii and pay salaries sufficient to justify them in de- 
manding professional preparation, they have taken a 
long step in advance toward a profession of teaching. 
Communities will then be less dependent upon local 
teachers — the sons and daughters and nieces and nephews 
of local politicians and relatives of prominent families. 
Between these on the one hand and the indigent never- 
do-wells who have a half charitable claim on the com- 
munity and are pensioned with a position in the schools 
there are many communities in which there is little in- 
centive for young persons to prepare for teaching. When 
a professional preparation is required from all appli- 
cants things will be different. Then those who look 
to teaching as a serious occupation will have the ad- 
vantage. 

It is an unfortunate thing for the schools that so few 
teachers can be progressive, up-to-date, and thoroughly 
alive to their own welfare and continue to teach for a 
life time in their own locality. There are a few exam- 
ples of such teachers and such teaching. The person 
and the opportunity met, but in many, many cases, in 
fact, very few cases has the worthy person and the 
worthy position for such person come together. Pres- 
ident John W. Cook, in an address a few years ago, in 
commenting upon this lack of opportunity, thought it 
the duty of the community to increase the salary until 
we could have the best teachers remaining continually 
at the same school or neighborhood. This sounds plaus- 
ible at first. It would seem strange, however, to see a 
man of President Cook's caliber content to continue to 
teach in the same district school where he began. We 
may well wonder if it would have been the same Pres- 
ident Cook of national fame as an educator if he had 
done so, or whether he had been dwarfed in the staying 



SECURING A POSITION. 23 

into a very ordinary person — perhaps a cook without the 
capital letter. 

The worthy, ambitious, successful teacher will in 
more than nine cases out of ten sooner or later desire 
a position away from home. Then the problem of how 
to secure a position becomes a live one to them. The 
first thing, of course, is to find a vacancy, a place where 
a teacher is wanted, and the second thing is to make 
the school officials believe you are just the person for 
the position. 

A good teachers' agency can be of much service to 
you in finding the vacancy. They serve the same pur- 
pose in locating teachers — and a legitimate purpose it is, 
that a real estate agent does in buying or selling real 
estate. The dealer in real estate brings the buyer and 
the seller together. He serves both, and if a man of hon- 
esty and principle, may be of service to both and his 
business in every way a creditable one. The real estate 
man usually kno^ys who wants to sell property, knows 
something of the value of property, looks up the title 
and records, and then brings the buyer and seller togeth- 
er, or takes charge of the details entirely. To the per- 
son who has ever been served by a good real estate 
agency no justification of the business is needed. The 
same is true of a good teachers' agency. A good agency 
spends hundreds of dollars each year seeking informa- 
tion of where there are to be vacancies and changes. 
School officials learn to depend upon many of the re- 
liable agencies to aid them in the selection of their 
teachers. Agencies also often have some weight in the 
matter of recommending teachers. This is especially 
true late in the season when unexpected vacancies occur. 
Agencies are then often asked to select teachers for the 



H TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

positions and school boards take them upon the recom- 
mendation of the agency. 

The greatest value of the teachers' agency to you 
in the early part of the season is in giving you reliable 
information in regard to vacancies. They often know 
where vacancies are to occur and the particulars of 
them. You would find it hard to collect this informa- 
tion — the places where there are vacancies, salary, qual- 
ifications desired, nature of work, etc. The information 
is valuable and is worth to you the cost of the com- 
mission in that it widens your field and chances. After 
you know these things, you must then push your own 
claims to secure the place. 

A good agency looks up your record as a student, 
as a teacher, and as a person of good character, and if 
your record • is not good it refuses you membership. 
There are, however, many agencies that are only leeches, 
depending upon membership fees for existence and car- 
ing little or nothing for the real business of locating 
teachers. In selecting an agency as in other things, you 
must use good judgment. There are many agencies that 
do good, honest work for its members. They usually 
charge a membership fee of two dollars and five per 
cent of the first year's salary, but they work faithfully 
for their members, and will not admit to membership a 
teacher whose record is not good. Beware of the agency 
that guarantees you a position. It cannot do it and do 
a legitimate business. 

After you know there is a vacancy, the next thing 
is to make the Board of Education believe you are the 
person for the place. You must depend upon your own 
personality and ability in presenting your claims, togeth- 
er with the aid of your friends. Applications are usu- 
ally made in writing, and often personal applications 



SECURING A POSITION. 25 

are called for before final arrangements are made. Your 
letter of application should be brief, specific, neatly writ- 
ten and well arranged. School boards are often busi- 
ness men, busy with other duties besides school afifairs. 
They want the facts in the case — age, health, weight, 
education, experience, success in teaching and govern- 
ing, something of your personality, etc. They will want 
personal references also that they may write and get in- 
formation about you direct, and very often ask very 
pointed questions. They, in fact, want to know the 
very things which you would probably want to know if 
you were employing a teacher. These facts should be 
briefly told, but well. The better the language, the 
more straightforward, the more forcible, the better it is 
arranged, the stronger the impression, and the more at- 
tention it will receive. Into your letter of application 
3^ou must put your best self. 

Let me emphasize the matter of arrangement of the 
letter. It goes without saying that the letter must be 
neatly and plainly written or type-written, and free from 
misspelled words. To my personal knowledge many 
teachers fail to arrange the form of the letter to appeal 
to the eye, and this is essential. Paragraphing counts 
for much in a letter of application. The long, loose, 
scrawly, disjointed letter, hard to follow when reading 
it, with pages mixed until you must turn the sheet once 
or twice to tell for sure where the sentence is continued 
— these letters often cost the writer a position, and it 
is right that they should. Use the standard business 
letter size of paper of good quality. Make your left-hand 
margin uniform. Write a neat, plain hand. Punctuate 
properly, and above all paragraph so that the eye catches 
at a glance each topic treated. If you are a teacher and 
do not know the value of the margin in placing emphasis 



26 



TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 



and attention upon a topic yon should study it before 
writing letters of application. 

Do not ask a lot of questions in your letter of appli- 
cation — such as size of place, cost of board, railroad 
facilities, etc. It is true that these are important items 
to you. But the secretary of a school board is too busy 
to answer all these points until you are seriously con- 
sidered for the position. You may be only one of fifty 
applicants. With the help of a few members of the 
board he will in a few minutes reduce them to probably 
half a dozen by eliminating those whose letters do not 
appeal to them. If your letter of application has been 
neat enough and strong enough to make a good impres- 
sion it will be among this half dozen. Now comes the 
actual consideration of the board. They weigh and 
study this select half dozen. They may then eliminate 
two or three of these and investigate and consider the 
remaining ones for several days before coming to a con- 
clusion. 

Keep your application before the board. If your 
first letter is strong enough to place you among the few 
to be carefully considered, these days of investigation 
are critical times. The skill with which you keep your- 
self before them will count much. Manage to write one 
or two members of the board every two or three days. 
Be brief and be business like, but do not seem to be 
anxious. Personal letters from those who know you 
will be worth much. Have them addressed to different 
members of the board. This will impress your name 
and application upon each member. Each member will 
have a vote, and you must reach a majority to win. 
Be careful also in the persons who write in your inter- 
ests. Many good men cannot write letters of recom- 
mendation and do it gracefully. They either overstate 



SECURING A POSITION. 2? 

or scatter. The list of references you give will mean 
much. 

If you are elected to the position then comes the time 
and opportunity to make inquiry as to salary, work, 
expenses, etc., before accepting. This can be done with- 
out giving offense or arousing the suspicion that you 
will not accept. You may also accept only conditionally 
until you know these points. After you have been of- 
fered a place, if you have any doubts about the work, 
then ask your questions. Be pointed and accurate, and 
expect a prompt and businesslike reply. If the condi- 
tions are such that you cannot accept do not keep them 
waiting, but tell them that you decline the place, and 
give them the reasons. 

With your letter of application should go copies of 
a few good testimonials from persons who know you 
and your work. Send also a good photograph, and a 
self-addressed, government stamped envelope for reply. 
Get some good brief testimonials from those who know 
you best — your teachers and one or two business men. 
If you have taught, get testimonials from the school 
board and patrons testifying to the success of your work. 
Keep these original testimonials. Have neat type-written 
copies made and send a few of these with each letter 
of application. Offer to send others, and in writing the 
board later it is well to enclose one or two new testi- 
monials with each letter. 

In addition to the testimonials, refer them to a few 
reliable persons who know you and your worth. Ask 
the board to write these persons asking about you. 
Many persons have little faith in a general testimonial 
written to the public and for your own perusal. These 
same persons often have much confidence in a personal, 
private letter stating the same thing, or answering 



28 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

definite questions about you. For reference it is best 
to give the names of persons Who have not already given 
you pubHc testimonials. Select for such references per- 
sons who know you, and persons who will answer 
promptly and specifically any questions asked about you. 
Many good men who could and would give you a good 
testimonial are so negligent and careless that they fail 
to answer a letter of inquiry until it is too late. The 
busy business man who is accustomed to attending to 
his mail promptly and on time often makes a better ref- 
erence than a man of more leisure. The first writes 
promptly, while the second may carry the letter for a 
week or ten days before the spirit moves him to reply. 
This delay is considered by the board making the in- 
quiry as a reluctance on his part to recommend you. 

A good small photograph should go with each appli- 
cation. Good copies of large photographs are inexpen- 
sive and answer the purpose well. Often these photo- 
graphs are not returned, and if the copy is a good one 
it answers the purpose as well as a more expensive one. 
The photograph should be plain, but showing you at 
your best. A front view is usually best. The eyes and 
expression should be good. It should show you neatly 
dressed, but modestly and becomingly. Its purpose 
should be to emphasize your personality and not to show 
how pretty you can look. The low-necked, short-sleeved 
dramatic-posed photographs sent out by some teachers 
will and should defeat the applicant for a position as 
teacher. Such photographs might be all right in gay 
Newport or some other fashionable resort. But fortu- 
nately, a majority of our school boards are composed 
of business men of common sense, modesty, and good 
judgment. They are not seeking vaudeville performers, 
nor stage poses, but persons of modesty and good com- 



SECURING A POSITION. 29 

men sense to teach school. Your photograph should 
show these qualities in you, else in most cases it will 
serve to defeat rather than to help you to a school posi- 
tion. 

Enclose a self- addressed stamped envelope for reply. 
It will pay. This will bring you more replies than a loose 
stamp enclosed. It is even better if you use the govern- 
ment stamped envelope which may be had at any post- 
office. Applying for a school is a business matter, not 
social, and business forms should be used. Use plain 
white paper, business size, with envelopes to match, and 
write on one side of paper only, numbering pages. 

If the position is a good one and the contest close, 
the board may request a personal visit. If possible, it 
is best for you to go. Five minutes conversation may 
clinch a position which otherwise you would lose. Make 
it a business call, not a social. Dress for business, not 
for society. Be well groomed, but seemingly indifferent 
to dress. Be at your best. If the trip is a long one 
stop at a hotel and, rest and dust before calling on the 
board. Excuses for personal appearance may be reason- 
able, but to ''land the job" your chances are better if 
no excuses are necessary. It is a difficult trial to appear 
before a board of strange men, an applicant for a posi- 
tion from them, and yet be quiet and composed. It is 
a test of your personality, and if you acquit yourself well 
it shows strength and usually secures you the position. 
To be composed you may have to use will power and 
mental effort. It is possible to do this successfully. In 
fact much of experience consists in nothing more than 
the ability to keep composed under trying conditions. 
Neither your life, health, happiness nor future success de- 
pends entirely upon the result of the interview. It may be 
hard to believe this at the time, but if you can make your- 



30 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

self realize it you have struck the keynote to success. The 
members of the board are only men, plain, blunt men, 
not always the strongest men. They are human like 
yourself. Be frank, be independent, be courteous, look 
them square in the eye, talk to the point, but do not talk 
too much. The interview is often a contest of person- 
alities, your own personality, and that of the board. You 
must show composure and courage. This will secure for 
you the position often over the strongest of applicants. 

There is skill and art in one's ability to secure a po- 
sition. One element of advancement and success will 
depend upon how you master these. 



CHAPTER IV. 



PASSING THE EXAMINATION. 



The formal examination of teachers is a necessary 
evil. It is one of the ways of eliminating the incompe- 
tent. Examinations are necessary. On the other hand, 
they sometimes license those who are utterly incompetent 
and cut out those who would teach good schools. Tak- 
ing the examination, all in all, it is helpful. By elim- 
inating the bad features and encouraging the good they 
may be made better still. 

Passing the examination is an ordeal that confronts 
most young teachers and often older ones. We all feel 
better after it is over. Many of our leaders in education, 
university professors, normal school teachers, specialists 
and heads of departments along with many superintend- 
ents would hesitate to stake their reputation as a teacher 
or educator upon the answers to ten questions from each 
of ten subjects, these subjects to be prepared and the 
answers graded by "the other fellow." Yet this is the 
ordeal to be passed by most young teachers. Is it any 
wonder they dread it? 

Every thinking man will concede that the usual ex- 
amination does not test the applicant's ability to teach. 
The answers to a series of questions will not do this 
thoroughly. A better and more sensible test would be 
to have the applicant prepare a list of questions to test 
a class that has just completed a given division of a 
subject. If the teaching ability of some superintendents 
and examining boards were to be tested by the lists of 
questions sometimes asked of teachers they would be 
refused a third-grade license. The lists show quite evi- 



32 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

dently that they were hurriedly made with Httle thought 
of testing the applicant's teaching ability. It is also true 
that the examination is not even a good test of the ap- 
plicant's knowledge of the subject. The real intelligence 
shown in the answers, the arrangement and scholarship 
and neatness and accuracy are the essential things. Noth- 
ing can be more ridiculous than a little two-by-four ex- 
aminer or superintendent making a list of questions, many 
of them narrow and indefinite, and then that these same 
questions must be answered in certain specific words to 
make grades on them. One examiner recently asked: 
''What did Washington do before he crossed the Dela- 
ware ?" Well, he did many things. But if the applicant 
did not state that "he divided his army into three divi- 
sions, etc.," he missed the question intended by the exam- 
iner, and lost ten per cent on that question. Examina- 
tions based upon such questions are as much a farce as 
the method of holding a two weeks' institute and follow 
it by an examination based upon the subjects discussed 
during the time. The whole time and energy of the 
teachers is spent in cramming for the examination. 

If an examination is to be a fair and reasonable one, 
the best preparation for it is an intensive study of the 
subject upon which you are to be examined. Do not 
study the subject with the thought of examination upper- 
most in your mind. Study it with a view to mastering 
and understanding it. Let the thought of what questions 
may be asked on examination go. If you master the 
subject, all legitimate questions asked on examination will 
be easily answered. The hard examination to you is an 
examination in which you do not know how to answer 
the questions. If you have mastered the subject you 
will very probably know the answers to most of the 
reasonable questions asked. Cramming for examination 



PASSING THE EXAMINATION. 33 

is usually time wasted. To study and cram on question 
books and old lists of examination questions is time 
thrown away. Get your text-book and try to master 
the principles and divisions of the subjects, and your time 
is well spent. 

If possible, be in good physical condition on the day 
of examination. This counts for much. Some teachers 
overwork themselves preparing for examination. They 
become nervous and do not sleep well. This leaves 
them without reserve force and in poor physical condi- 
tion when the time comes. Other teachers work late the 
night before examination and sleep little, often getting 
up early to study just before going to examination. I 
have seen them bring a book in one hand glancing at 
it to refresh their mind in the hall as they were passing 
to the examination room. This anxiety saps their nerve 
force and leaves them in no mental state for a strenuous 
day's work. If early in the examination they find some- 
thing difficult to them they go to pieces and do not re- 
cover during the da,y. Leave off both study and review. 
Do this for at least twenty-four hours before time for 
examination. Keep your mind from dwelling upon the 
examination. Take plenty of exercise and if you find 
time hanging heavy, read some good story. Retire at 
your usual time the night before examination and sleep 
your usual number of hours. Get to the place of exam- 
ination in time to have a half hour or more to get famil- 
iar with the strange surroundings and to talk with teach- 
ers before the examination is called. Nothing relieves 
one's anxiety more. Practice writing a few minutes be- 
fore the actual work begins. This makes your hand 
steady, and you are pleased with your first work. It 
always pays you to be on time or ahead of time on ex- 
amination day. 

3 



34 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

Go to the examination room prepared for work. 
Have either a good fountain pen or a good easy pen- 
holder with some extra pens and a bottle of ink. It may 
be your superintendent demands some special kind of 
paper or manuscript book. Get this before going to the 
examination unless the superintendent supplies them. 
Have also a blank book and pencil and a sharp knife or 
a pencil sharpener. In other words, go to the examina- 
tion prepared for work just as you would expect your 
pupils to come to school on examination day. 

Work carefully and persistently, and as rapidly as 
possible. Nothing is more detrimental to good work 
than to feel that you are behind with your subject. Do 
not rush, but try to complete each subject in time to 
review your paper before time is called. Neatness, accu- 
rate spelling, and careful, systematic arrangement of 
your work will make a good impression always, and get 
the good will of the examiner. Slovenness and careless 
arrangement will unconsciously prejudice the examiner 
against you. Your thought and answers must be unusu- 
ally strong if they overcome the prejudice unconsciously 
caused by poor writing or poor arrangement. 

Let me emphasize again the importance of system- 
atic arrangement of work. Poor penmanship, if it is 
uniform and legible, may be overlooked if the work is 
properly arranged. Paragraphing, punctuation and gen- 
eral arrangement count more than all else in making a 
neat manuscript. I used to read the manuscript of an 
author frequently. His writing, considered by itself, was 
poor — extremely poor. It required practice to learn to 
read it, but it was uniform. It all looked alike. His 
punctuation and paragraphing was almost perfect. The 
general impression was good, and when you once mas- 
tered his particular letter formation and learned to dis- 



PASSING THE EXAMINATION. 35 

tingiiish his a's, his o's and a few others, his manuscript 
was easily read. The mechanical side of your examina- 
tion manuscript, will, if properly cared for, balance many 
little flaws in the answers themselves. 

Read the questions carefully. Hasty reading of ques- 
tions will account for many mistakes. After having read 
the question take time to think the answer. Then con- 
dense the answer as much as possible, and have it com- 
plete and clear. Number your answers to correspond 
with the questions, leaving one or two lines blank between 
the answers. If you have doubts about the meaning of 
a question, express it in writing, and answer it according 
to the interpretation you think most plausible. Do not 
be long-winded or wordy in your answers. Be brief, be 
accurate, be neat. 

Try to complete each subject in time to go over it 
carefully. Correct any mistakes you may find before 
handing in your paper. It will be time well spent. Many 
little mistakes, simply little slips of the hand, will occur 
when your mind is centered upon the thought to be ex- 
pressed. If any work or calculations are transferred 
from your scratch book to your manuscript be sure it 
is copied correctly. Frequently mistakes are made in 
copying, but the examiner cannot know this, and must 
grade you in what you place on your manuscript. He 
grades upon the accuracy of the work as he finds it. 

Approached properly, the examination should lose 
many of its terrors for young teachers. 



CHAPTER V. 

PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER. 

Experience in the school-room counts for much. 
Teaching soon fastens certain personal peculiarities upon 
the teacher which makes him readily distinguished from 
other persons. Fifty teachers visiting Chicago had 
agreed to be so discreet in their conduct that no one 
would judge them to be teachers. Much to their surprise 
they had not walked two blocks from the depot until a 
dirty- faced bootblack called out in a drawling tone: 
"First class in geography, stan' up." Some of these ec- 
centricities may be detrimental. Others are worth much 
professionally, as they give other people confidence in 
your ability to teach. They are recognized as ear-marks 
of the teacher. 

Pupils and patrons are often more critical of young 
teachers than of teachers who have had experience, and 
have established reputations as being able to teach and 
to govern. They are looking for signs of weakness. 
Fortunate is the young teacher who can stand this test. 
His first and second schools will pretty well establish 
his standing in the community. After that they will be 
less critical and more apt to take things for granted. 

One of the hardest problems of the young teacher is 
to acquire the feeling of familiarity or composure in the 
school-room. New clothes sometimes do not set well 
and new positions are the same. He hesitates, his voice 
does not sound familiar, he feels and looks awkward, 
he lacks confidence in himself, and instead of children 
being considerate of these things they notice them and 
are quick to take advantage of them. The rougher ele- 



PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER. 37 

ment of boys and the more careless of the girls may 
take pleasure in the teacher's discomfort. Such things 
try the mettle of the teacher. If he is made of the right 
material and has good judgment, he will come out all 
right. If he is naturally a coward or if he is full of 
egotism and conceit the pupils may soon lead him a 
merry chase. The more clearly he has the work planned, 
the more definite his ideas of what and how and why to 
do, the easier to gain composure in the school-room. 
Then, too, many excellent teachers are sensitive. They 
may soon grow easy and composed in the school-room 
with only their pupils before them. A caller or a vis- 
it from the principal or a school official completely un- 
nerves them. They are ill at ease, they blush and blun- 
der, and are always at a disadvantage. Familiarity and 
composure are the fruits of experience and study and 
practice in the school-room. 

Composure, a level head, a knowledge of what you 
want done, and why you want it done and faith in your 
own ability to have it done gives composure to the whole 
school. Restlessness, lack of faith in self, fear of fail- 
ure, these bring about the very conditions you are striv- 
ing to avoid, and the school becomes restless, noisy, hard 
to control. The school takes its coloring from your own 
attitude, and when things go wrong, begin to seek the 
cause in your own actions, disposition and manners. 
Learn to study yourself without upbraiding, and yet with 
determination to find the cause of your failure. Confi- 
dence in yourself and courage backed by good judgment 
will make government easy. Remember the government 
of a school is more a matter of mind than of physical 
strength. The clearness of your mental vision, your 
insight into motives, your ideals of school. and of life 
and your knowledge of boy and girl nature count infinite- 



38 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

ly more than your avoirdupois. In very rare cases from 
home training or pecuHar environment wrong motives of 
true manhood may inspire a bully until force — mere 
physical force — is the proper remedy, and a downright 
good threshing is the thing needed. But such occasions 
are rare indeed, and the young teacher should feel that 
there is something radically wrong in his own personal- 
ity and methods of government if he must resort to such 
measures often. 

A young teacher must guard his health. You can't 
teach day and night. The petty worries of the school- 
room must not be carried to your home or boarding 
place. Shake them from yourself when you quit the 
building and grounds. Lock them in the school-room 
when you leave it, and if you sleep soundly they will 
have vanished into thin air before the door is opened 
the next day. Your health will react upon your work 
in the school-room. Not the work, but the worry kills. 
During my first three terms I taught school all day and 
dreamed school all night. The dreaming was harder 
than the teaching. My best pupils, the ones who would 
not for the world do anything to cause me trouble, were 
always in mischief in my dreams. From the first, force 
yourself to think of the pleasant things of the day as 
much as possible, and forget the unpleasant or shut them 
from your thoughts. Too often you find after sleepless 
nights of worry about some frivolous little breach of con- 
duct by some thoughtless boy the whble thing glides 
by without a ripple, and the problem solves itself. 

If you are blessed with a good digestion, the world 
ought to look bright to you. No terrors in teaching 
are equal to those caused by undigested beefsteak, and 
a dose of pepsin is often a far greater aid in teaching 
than a six-foot switch. Eat plenty of nutritious food, 



PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER. 39 

such as agrees with you, drink plenty of pure water, 
take plenty of exercise in the open air, laugh when you 
can, meet and mingle with people, think good thoughts, 
teach yourself to believe in your own ability and suc- 
cess without growing egotistic, sleep not less than eight 
hours in each twenty-four, and make it nine if you can 
sleep soundly ; keep clean, and the world and your school 
will move well with you. 

The mind is self-creative. It can make a "heaven of 
hell or a hell of heaven" Milton tell us, and it is true. 
But there is a close relation between its activity and mental 
coloring, and the physical condition of the body. Teach- 
ers especially should learn to keep the body and the mind 
each at its best. Each reacts upon the other, and your 
school as well as your own happiness depends upon keep- 
ing both in the best condition. Avoid late study, irreg- 
ular habits, and all kinds of dissipation. Planning and 
preparation of work is necessary, but it is not the num- 
ber of hours you work, it is the intensity of the appli- 
cation that counts most. Systematize your work and 
work regularly and intensely, but do not encroach upon 
your hours of sleep unless you want to pay the penalty 
with interest. Let me say here parenthetically that if all 
teachers had a fair knowledge of shorthand, enough to 
enable them to record their own thoughts and to read 
their own notes readily what a saving of time it would 
mean in the preparation of their daily work. Would not 
it be worth while for every teacher to know this much 
stenography ? 

Then, too, regular habits count for so much — regular 
eating, regular sleeping, regular exercise. Teachers who 
board cannot always get just what they want, but as 
a rule their accommodations are fairly good — often as 
good as they would get at home. One can adjust them- 



40 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

selves to the conditions if these be regular. In most 
homes the meals are served nearly on time, seldom vary- 
ing more than half an hour, but sleeping is often irreg- 
ular. Regular sleep is perhaps the most important item 
of all — a good bed, ventilation, comfort, quiet, with little 
variation in retiring or rising — these are important to the 
teacher who must meet with plenty of reserve and nerve 
force the problems of the school-room next day. 

There are various forms of dissipation. In addition, 
however, to intoxicants as a beverage, the habitual use 
of many patent medicines may be almost as injurious. 
Then, too, there are lighter beverages very injurious. 
The coca-cola habit is little better than the beer-drinking 
habit, and the same is true of many other drinks so "re- 
freshing to tired nerves." One of the worst forms of 
dissipation is day-dreaming, or simply idling away the 
time. If you have time to idle or to day-dream, do it in 
the open air and in the sunshine where the exercise will 
do you good or go forth on a still, clear night and watch 
the movements of the heavenly bodies, the star-decked 
sky, and drink in its inspiration and beauty. Much of 
the light reading — newspaper, magazine, and the rag-time 
fiction so current — is the worst form of mental dissipa- 
tion. 

The love-sick young man and the giddy girl are too 
often teachers, and the time and energy in thinking and 
writing to one another is more than is used in their teach- 
ing. I do not speak lightly of love or criticise teachers 
for falling in love or in loving one another or in loving 
some one who is not a teacher. Love in its highest 
form and love of the individual as well as the love of 
humanity as a whole is essential to the development of 
the person. Nothing creates higher ambition or nobler 
impulses than love. To love a pure-minded woman — a 



PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER. 4^ 

teacher she may be — is one of the greatest things that 
can happen to a young man. It is equally valuable to a 
young woman. The young man or young woman in 
love, with the hope that this love is or may be mutual, 
and when this loved one is idolized as made up of all 
that is pure and worthy and noble, is always safe. It 
gives new life and energy and ambition. It can be 
seen in the flashing eye, the elastic step and the bodily 
poise. No tonic is so life-giving, no beverage so invig- 
orating, no view of life so rich in its coloring. Health, 
hope, courage, ambition, all good things follow in its 
wake. Such love as this is not dissipation. But the love- 
sick young man who pines for his lady love — the last one 
who smiled on him, it matters little who ; the giddy girl 
who has two strings to each of her half a dozen beaux 
and is too busy pulling these strings to think of anything 
else — these are unfit to teach. 

Then, too, the young teacher must sacrifice some- 
thing to public opinion. Public opinion may be ever so 
narrow, so unreasonable, so unjust, but if you are to 
establish your reputation in that community as a reliable, 
trustworthy teacher, you cannot afford to be indifferent 
to it. I am speaking especially of the town, the village, 
and the country where all eyes are on the teacher, and 
where every man, woman and child knows him. In the 
towns, villages and the country the teacher is relatively 
of greater importance than in the city. Young men teach- 
ing in these communities cannot afford to do much 
keeping company or going to see the girls, and young 
women teachers cannot afford to have many beaux or 
even one regular one whose attentions are quite notice- 
able to the public. The highest motives may prevail, the 
enjoyment and pleasure may be great, and even then 
the teacher, like the minister, must forego many things 



42 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

which would be unnoticed in others, or else pay the 
price which is often dear enough. Sniggering school 
boys and giggling school girls for weeks will nudge one 
another and make remarks at your expense, and not al- 
ways complimentary. Rail against it if you will, but it 
makes matters worse. Laugh about it and it often com- 
promises your dignity. Punish for it, and you stir up 
a hornets' nest in the neighborhood. You can soon kill 
your influence in that neighborhood for good by a little 
harmless indiscretion. Beware! 

/ Just how to get the good will and respect of patrons 
and pupils no one can tell you. It is a problem to be 
solved by your own good sense and personality. It is 
easier to tell you what not to do than to tell you what 
to do. The best advice is to be yourself, but to be your 
best self. Do not try to show off. Do not try to advise 
on every topic that comes up. Do not push yourself for- 
ward in outside matters. Listen to those older than 
yourself. Weigh what they say, but in school matters 
be your own boss. Talk little about your plans or your 
past success. Keep your school room troubles strictly to 
yourself. Do not criticise former teachers, and if teach- 
ing with other teachers beware of criticising another 
teacher in the same school, however much you may dis- 
like their methods. The teacher may be ever so unpopu- 
lar, and the person may invite criticism ever so much, but 
it is your place to avoid it. Then, too, do not criticise 
or praise one pupil before another pupil or patron out- 
side of school. It is dangerous, and a little tact will 
enable you to avoid it. Your criticism will do no good, 
and your praise may cause the bitterest of jealousy^ 
"Miss Jones, don't you think Grace is smart?" said a little 
girl. "Yes, we have many smart pupils in school," re- 



PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER. 43 

plied Miss Jones, and the girl's question was answered 
and no jealousy created. 

Your success and power for good in the neighbor- 
hood will be determined very largely by the esteem and 
confidence the pupils and the patrons place in you. 



CHAPTER VI. 



GRADING THE SCHOOL. 



The planning and making of a course of study falls 
to the lot of few teachers at present. Nearly every 
state has either a well-planned state course or else the 
county is the unit, and the county superintendent or the 
county board of education plan the course. While there 
is growth along this line in many places, the organization 
of the schools is less perfect, and the course of study is 
planned by the teacher in charge of the school. 

A uniform course of study is a great strength to the 
school system. By uniformity, I do not mean dead uni- 
formity, but intelligent, rational uniformity. Not the 
uniformity that takes all the life and individuality out of 
the teacher, but the uniformity that sets definite, rational 
ends, and makes a proper criterion of work and attain- 
ment possible in the different schools. What is needed 
is a course of study flexible enough to be adjusted to the 
varying classes and schools and uniform enough that 
the pupil leaving one school may be easily and properly 
classified when he enters another school. Many of our 
city systems have more red tape and system than any 
thing else, but our country schools in most states will 
be improved by more system and organization. Many 
able persons and many teachers of experience will cry 
out against better grading of the country schools and 
declare it cannot be done. This was the cry twenty- 
rive years ago when my own state began in a crude way 
to grade the country schools. It will continue in every 
onward step taken. 



GRADING THE SCHOOL. 45 

Experienced teachers who have become used to the 
old way are often the first to cry out against the change, 
and assert vehemently that it will never work in the 
country school. Long after it has become an accom- 
plished fact there will be some who will refuse to see 
it. Like the stubborn father whose son had told him 
he could show him snow in June. Following the boy up 
a narrow little ravine, the boy pointed down in the 
cavity of an old hollow stump and said, "Look there 
father, there is the snow." The father took care to close 
his eyes before looking, and replied: "Son, I don't see a 
bit of snow." 

The very argument used to prove that the country 
school cannot be graded and follow a uniform course 
of study is the best argument for gradation and a uniform 
course of study. I believe that every one who has ever 
studied the subject will agree that a rational uniform 
course of study will do the following things : 

1. Secure better attendance. 

2. Secure mor^ regular attendance. 

3. Keep pupils in school longer. Hundreds of pupils 
are kept in school and do good work because of their 
desire and their parents' desire that they graduate. The 
desire for a diploma may not be the highest motive for 
an education, but so far all of our best institutions have 
found it necessary to hold to the custom. 

4. Secure better work on the part of both teachers 
and pupils. The tread mill grind of going over and 
over the same work year after year disgusts many pu- 
pils with school life. Unless there is specific things set 
for the grade, or in other words, if there is not a course 
of study, very few schools but will repeat the same work 
with the same class. When a boy in the ungraded 
school we went over the identical work five years in sue- 



46 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

cession, the only variation was the natural variation 
from having three different teachers in the five years. 

There is but one argument against the grading of the 
country schools. That argument is that the pupils do not 
attend regularly. Grading is one of the best promoters 
of regular attendance. If there is anything that stirs 
parents and makes them alive to school matters and 
observant of what is going on in school, it is for their 
boy or girl to fail to be promoted. Irregular attendance 
is very apt to be remedied when they find that it will 
endanger the promotion. This overcomes many a flimsy 
excuse which would otherwise keep the child out of 
school near the close of the year. It makes the work of 
school a reality, a business, something to be rated along 
with any other kind of business instead of an entertain- 
ment or place of amusement to be attended when there 
is nothing else to do. 

In my own experience I have never been troubled 
much with attendance running down near the end of the 
year, although I have taught in different schools, differ- 
ent localities, and often as late as the middle of June. 
Pupils and parents knew that those who missed the last 
month or the last few weeks of the term must stand an 
examination at the opening of the next term before be- 
ing promoted. It may have been a false motive, but I 
believe it was as good and as legitimate a motive as many 
parents have for keeping children out of school the last 
month or six weeks of the term as is often done. Pupils 
want to come and parents usually arrange to let them 
come rather than to risk an examination after the sum- 
mer's vacation of three months. 

While in common with all good teachers, I have put 
forth an extra effort near the close of the school year 
to keep up school interest and a good school spirit, I 



GRADING THE SCHOOL. 47 

think the graded school course has helped me much. As 
a boy, I attended the ungraded school where any pupil 
took practically anything that suited him or his parents. 
I began teaching in an ungraded school, and am glad 
that at the end of two years I left it as well graded as 
many city schools. The schools of that county are now 
well graded, much to the advantage of education in the 
country. Two of my best teachers were bitterly opposed 
to the grading of the country schools. They fought 
it in institutes, associations and at every possible 
opportunity in conversation. One of them taught long 
enough to be converted and see the error of his way, the 
other never did surrender, quit teaching fifteen years 
ago, and thinks the world is badly out of joint. The 
grading of country schools is coming, in fact, is here 
in some form except in the most primitive communities. 
It is the common sense plan, it is practical, it is efficient. 
It does not have the hide-bound red tape of the city 
system, but it gives all the interest of class stimulus 
and definite rational accomplishment as a standard. 

If you want to find individualism gone to seed, if you 
want to find hobbies ridden hard, and to the everlasting 
detriment of children, go to the ungraded public 
or average private school. The teacher leads off on 
his hobby, and he magnifies the hobby as he goes. If it 
is an ungraded public school, they go to seed on arith- 
metic, or history or map-drawing, or the particular line 
that offers least resistance or that fits the teacher's par- 
ticular whims best. If it is the average ungraded pri- 
mary private school, filled with mammas' little angel 
darlings, too pretty and too petted to go to the public 
school, it is even worse. The teacher masticates every- 
thing, and puts it into the most charming fashion and 
makes believe they are really doing something. She is 



48 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

also discovering latent geniuses every few days. If the 
child likes to use water colors, she is an embryo artist, 
and her mother must develop this unusual talent. If the 
child can sing "Merry Greeting to You" she is a musician 
and the mother must from that day plan to keep her very 
exclusive and later send her to Paris to finish. A uni- 
form course of study planned properly, representing the 
accumulated experience and judgment of our best educa- 
tors, may have some flaws, but on the other hand it 
saves many of the gravest mistakes with the great mass 
of teachers and persons unaccustomed to thinking on 
educational subjects. 

The planning of a rational course of study is no 
small task. It will vary with state and probably with 
the locality within the state. It will vary much with the 
nation. The danger is that each small locality may feel 
that their particular needs are different and must have 
special attention. In making the course of study the 
knowledge of the specialist is needed, toned down and 
corrected by the liberally educated man with broader 
views. Conditions must be weighed and due considera- 
tion for the worth of studies taken into account. The 
scientist wants to magnify science, the historian history, 
the mathematician mathematics, etc. It is in this par- 
ticular that the specialist in the high school or the grades 
must be held in check by a liberal-minded superintendent 
or principal. Unless this is done, each will overload the 
student with his specialty. I have had teachers who if 
left to themselves would have monopolized the time of 
the high school pupil with Latin. The student that did 
not know Latin was in the estimation of that teacher 
a block-head, and should quit school and go to work. 

Examine a course of study and you will find revealed 
much of the judgment and mental caliber of the teachers 



GRADING THE SCHOOL. 49 

of the school. It is not uncommon to find high schools- 
proper with university curricula. High-sounding names, 
often, are an attempt to hide the fact that it is an ordi- 
nary high school and many times very ordinary indeed. 

Before me is a recent catalogue of a collegiate insti- 
tute — it would be more appropriate to call it a village 
high school, that completes in two years Latin, including 
Preparatory Latin, Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Ovid and Vir- 
gil, and then devotes the last year to Greek. There must 
be either intellectual giants in those parts or else some 
gigantic fools. To the thinking man the course of study 
would be a signal to give the school a wide berth. 

We must not forget that the course of study is made 
for the child and not the child for the course of study. 
It must not be too hide-bound. There may be once in a 
while an exception to it. There may be extraordinary 
children that will not fit into the ordinary course. These 
should be treated as exceptions, and considered by them- 
selves. Study the cause and figure the results of such 
changes and then be true to the child rather than to the 
course of study. The ungraded school goes to one ex- 
treme. Each child is changed and classified for any 
sort of whim. If he does not get all of to-day's lesson 
he goes it alone, thereby losing the incentive that comes 
from class competition. On the other hand, the course 
of study may become a fetich until the pupil that cannot 
make the uniform course is ignored. The saner, safer 
middle ground is best. 

Below is given a mere skeleton outline of a course of 
study. Roughly it follows what is sometimes called 
the nationalized course. It would seem that careful ad- 
justment would adapt it to almost any kind of school. 
The teacher or local board could follow its guidance as 
to subjects and quickly allot the work in the different 



50 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

grades. The texts used, the local conditions and the 
particular classes would thus be cared for. One class 
perhaps could do more in arithmetic than the same grade 
next year. Certain standards could be set. If the class 
could not reach this standard they could come as near 
reaching it as possible, and the remainder of the work 
could go over to the next year. The best classes would 
set standards of attainment that succeeding classes might 
be envious of equaling or surpassing. I have known 
teachers and classes to snooze over simple interest for 
month after month while if the teacher and the class 
had known that if they did not get a good working 
knowledge of simple interest in one month that the class 
would be considered slow or else the teaching poor, the 
work would have been done and well done in one month. 
Teachers and classes accomplish most when much is ex- 
pected of them. That is one of the good things about a 
uniform course of study. One school learns to compare 
itself with another school, and both are benefited by it. 

Set certain definite accomplishments for the class and 
the grade, do well what work you undertake, but keep 
moving. The outline may help you. 
I. Primary Grades. 

I. First year. 

1. Reading. 

2. Writing 

3. Spelling. 

4. Language. 

5. Numbers. 

6. General lessons. 

1. Singing. 

2. Drawing. 

3. Care of the body. 

4. Calisthenics. 

5. Morals and manners. 



GRADING THE SCHOOL, 5^ 



2. Second year. 


I. 


Reading. 


2. 


Writing. 


3- 


SpelHng. 


4- 


Language. 


5- 


Numbers. 


6. 


General lessons. 




I. Singing. 




2. Drawing. 




3. Care of the body. 




4. Calisthenics. 




5. Morals and manners. 


3, Third year. 


I. 


Reading. 


2. 


Writing. 


3- 


Spelling. 


4- 


Language. 


5- 


Primary arithmetic. 


6. 


General lessons. 




I. Singing. 




.2. Drawing. 




3. Care of the body. 




4. Calisthenics. 




5. Nature study. 




6. Morals and manners. 


[. Intermediate grades. 


I. Fourth year. 


I. 


Reading. 


2. 


Writing. 


3- 


Spelling. 


4. 


Language. 


5- 


Arithmetic. 


6. 


Geography. 



52 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

7. General lessons. 

1. Singing. 

2. Drawing. 

3. Health lessons. 

4. Nature study. 

5. Calisthenics. 

6. Morals and manners. 

2. Fifth year. 

1. Reading and literature. 

2. Writing. 

3. Spelling. 

4. Language. 

5. Arithmetic. 

6. Geography. 

7. General lessons. 

1. Music. 

2. Drawing. 

3. Hygiene. 

4. Nature or agriculture. 

5. Calisthenics. 

6. Morals and manners. 

3. Sixth year. 

1. Literature. 

2. Writing. 

3. SpeUing. 

4. Elementary grammar. 

5. Arithmetic. 

6. Geography. 

7. History. 

8. General lessons. 

1. Music. 

2. Drawing. 

3. Hygiene. 

4. Nature or agriculture. 



GRADING THE SCHOOL. 53 





5. Calisthenics. 






6. Morals and manners. 






7. Sloyd. 




III. Advanced grades. 




I. Seventh year. 




I. 


Literature. 




2. 


Orthography. 




3. 


Grammar. 




4. 


Arithmetic. 




5. 


Geography. 




6. 


History. 




7- 


Physiology. 




8. 


General exercises. 

1. Music. 

2. Drawing. 

3. Nature or agriculture. 

4. Sloyd. 




2. Eighth year. 




I. 


Literature. 




2. 


Orthography. 




3- 


Grammar and composition. 




4. 


Arithmetic. 




5. 


Geography. 




6. 


History. 




7- 


Physiology. 




8. 


General exercises. 
I. Music. 

2. Drawing. 

3. Nature or agriculture. 

4. Sloyd or manual training. 

5. Literary exercises. 




No one would expect you to have a daily lesson 


in all 


the above subjects. For example, in the first year 


read- 


ing, writing, spelling and language would be combined. 



54 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

In the second year these subjects in the main would be 
combined. The general lessons need not be daily lessons 
and often two or more years could be combined in the 
same instruction. Calisthenics could be general exer- 
cises for all the grades or the two advanced grades might 
be excused from these if you thought best. History and 
geography might come on alternate days, or history and 
physiology. The course is to represent the lines of 
study that in a well-graded school are kept abreast. The 
allotment of time and the work is left to the adjustment 
of the teacher or school. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OPENING EXERCISES. 



No period of the day is so important in its influence 
on the day's work or so rich in opportunities for good 
in after Hfe as the first fifteen minutes after school is 
called in the morning. The teacher's task is not an 
easy one. Before her are as many dispositions as there 
are pupils. Before her are the physical, mental and mor- 
al defects of inheritance and the pernicious habits of 
home neglect and wrong training. The rich and the 
poor, the high and the low, the proud and the humble, the 
good and rhe bad, a heterogeneous group all are there — 
and out of these the teacher is to construct the working 
unit, the school. 

The spoiled babe, the father's favorite, the mother's 
pet, the orphan and the outcast, all meet here on common 
ground. The hope of a democracy is based upon this 
meeting and mingling. The perpetuity of our institu- 
tions must stand or fall by the results of such meeting. 
Each here learns to estimate the other and the estimate is 
usually the par value of the pupil. The banker's boy 
must measure brains with the bootblack and often each 
gets the best lesson of life in that measurement. The 
banker's boy often finds a worthy rival in the bootblack 
and unconsciously rates him higher than if they had 
never met. The bootblack may have higher hopes and 
ambitions kindled, together with a better estimate of his 
own innate worth and this is uplifting. Blood tells, but 
it as often tells weakness as strength, and often the best 
lesson of a wealthy boy's life is when he is wallowed — 
wallowed physically as well as mentally — by some poor, 



56 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

humble widow's son upon whom he had always looked 
with contempt. 

Out of this group of individuals, the teacher is each 
day to construct the working unit, the school. They 
gather from various homes and conditions, some gorged 
with indigestible dainties, others with appetites hardly 
appeased with the plainest of food, some bubbling over 
with fun and mischief, and others sour and sullen, all 
these are to become a unit for the day's work. To focus 
these minds, to draw them from the petty home inci- 
dents of the morning, to put them into harmony with the 
work of the day, the tuning of these minds is the one 
great purpose of the daily opening exercises of the 
school. 

But in the very process of the exercise there comes 
numerous opportunities for the richest lessons of the 
school course. It gives the opportunity for teaching les- 
sons of patience, patriotism, duty, love, respect, obedience, 
gratitude and devotion. Kindness to animals, apprecia- 
tion of the beautiful in art and nature and literature, 
higher ideals of life, faith and hope and charity, and 
greatest of all the criterion of the really educated person, 
liberal-mindedness — all of these should find food in the 
unifying process of the school, the opening exercise. 

Perhaps, the one thing that will bear repetition often- 
est and grow in its good results by repetition in the open- 
ing exercise is singing. I discriminate between singing 
and a lesson in music. A lesson in music may not be 
one whit better for unifying the minds of the pupils than 
a lesson in grammar or arithmetic. But singing is bet- 
ter. An angry pupil cannot sing. In the singing he 
forgets his anger. Nothing so quickly recalls the wan- 
dering minds of pupils and gets them into harmony with 
the purpose of school, and makes them forget petty 



OPENING EXERCISES. 57 

troubles, as a good, soul-stirring song in which all 
unite. Patriotic songs, devotional songs, folk songs, 
songs of the home and the heart, nature songs — the list 
is long — all have their use in the opening exercise. Glad 
or sad, as the teacher desires to stir the pupils, so let 
the morning song be in opening exercise. 

Even if the teacher sings but little, there will be 
found always the faithful half dozen who can and will 
sing. The others will follow. Choose the songs that 
nearly all like and sing with enthusiasm. For the open- 
ing exercises not many songs are needed. If music is 
taught, new songs may be learned, and the favorite ones 
added to the list for morning use. Let me emphasize 
the fact that it is not the new and the difficult, but the old, 
the familiar, the soul-stirring song that is most useful in 
opening exercise. Something that all like, something 
that all can sing, something that appeals to the emotions 
— these are the songs for the opening of school. 

It is well if the teacher is leader in music, it is well 
if you have an organ or piano or other good instrument, 
it is well if you have song books, but sing even if you 
have none of these. A few pupils will be found who can 
lead, and many of the best music teachers advocate that 
pupils should be taught to sing alone and not with the 
teacher. The instrument is good, but not absolutely es- 
sential. Song books are very valuable indeed, and most 
schools can obtain them, but if you do not have them 
have each pupil make a copy of the words of a song in 
their opening exercise note book and commit the words 
to memory. By all means sing at the opening exercises 
of the day. Nothing will more quickly drive out the 
peevishness, relieve the sullenness, and make glad the 
whole school than the morning song well sung. 



58 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

The Opening exercise requires study, planning, and 
skill on the part of the teacher. No lesson needs more 
planning and in no lesson will you get better results if 
you do plan wisely and well. You must know in advance 
what you will present, not leave it to the impulse of the 
moment. Then, too, there must be variety. Children 
tire of sameness. If pupils know weeks in advance just 
what to expect at the opening exercise they will care 
less to be on time, especially if this particular exercise 
does not happen to appeal to them. If there is variety, 
if they feel that something new and good may occur any 
morning, they are more apt to be on time. Tardiness 
will decrease as the opening exercise increases in inter- 
est and value. 

Make the opening exercise brief, interesting and 
pointed. I have tried the various plans given below with 
success. The interest in each particular exercise varied 
with the school, the class and the conditions. If the pu- 
pils were particularly pleased I continued it longer. If 
they showed that they were not especially pleased I left 
it sooner and came back to it later, else omitted it in the 
future. These suggestions worked out will I believe 
give you abundant material for a year of school. 

1. A cheerful song, or two or three cheerful songs with 

no other exercise will often please the pupils. This 
is especially true on days when pupils are in the 
mood to sing. Choose songs that will suit the 
mood of the pupils at the time. 

2. A solo from some pupil or person or a duet from 

two pupils makes a pleasing change. These will 
be all the more pleasing if they come as a surprise 
to the school. 



OPENING EXERCISES. 59 

3. A humorous or pathetic story, either read or re- 

lated, if well done, is always interesting and in- 
structive. Do not spoil it by tacking a long moral 
to it. Pupils, most of them, will get their own 
lesson. Neither grown people nor children care 
to be preached to always. 

4. Reading from the Scriptures, and without comment, 

may often please and is always in place. This 
may be followed by a brief prayer if it come from 
the heart. Religious service in the public school 
must be free from sectarianism, and it is well to 
guard such exercises carefully. 

5. A cheerful devotional song followed by the Lord's 

Prayer given in concert by the school is good. 
Sincerity must characterize all exercises of a devo- 
tional nature, else they should be strictly avoided. 

6. A brief summary of the world's news of the week 

given by some pupil may be made very interesting 
in many schools. This is a splendid exercise for 
broadening the views and life of the pupil. 

7. Review the life of any great men dying. Prepare 

the leading facts of their life carefully and point- 
edly so that pupils will remember the facts and 
gain inspiration from the life. 

8. Discuss in the same way the lives of great men yet 

living. Avoid over praise and still better over- 
criticism. The natural tendency to hero worship 
in children is an uplifting force. Cultivate it. 
The past few years has seen a tendency in muck- 
rake quarters to belittle men. There are spots on 
the sun and perhaps faults in great men. Teach 
pupils to enjoy the warmth and heat without worry- 
ing about the spots. Teach them to look for the 
best in men rather than the worst. 



6o 



TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 



9. Discuss social questions such as strikes, elections, 
social movements, etc. Be liberal in your views, 
avoid partisan statements and bitter criticisms. 
The great purpose of education is to make men 
think and to be charitable and liberal in their 
thinking of others. 

10. Place a maxim or motto on the board and discuss 

its meaning and application with the school. This 
is very interesting often and broadening to the 
views of the class. Many of our maxims are 
rich with meaning, but pupils often fail to grasp 
the meaning. 

11. Perform or have some pupil perform an interesting 

experiment in physics or chemistry, one that ex- 
plains some scientific fact or principle. This will 
prove intensely interesting. It is no trouble to se- 
lect several such, and pupils are seldom tardy if 
they think they may miss such an exercise. 

12. Short queries are good if they are appropriate ones. 

13. Information lessons on plants and animals, illustra- 

ted when possible by objects or pictures, will be in- 
teresting and profitable. 

14. Discuss the manufacture of common articles, such 

as pens, pencils, boots, shoes, buttons, cotton and 
woolen goods, etc. If possible, have pupils visit 
such factories and describe the processes. If you 
cannot take the pupils, visit the factories yourself 
and observe the processes carefully that you may 
describe them accurately and interestingly. 

15. Select famous historic quotations such as "Don't give 

up the ship," ''Millions for defense, but not a 
cent for tribute," and have pupils tell when, by 
whom and upon what occasion they were uttered. 



OPENING EXERCISES. 



6i 



i6. Give brief descriptions of historic places and things 
you have seen. Be modest and be brief. 

17. Describe the habits, manners, customs and Hfe of 

strange people. Material is easily found for this. 
Do not read it to pupils, but prepare it and tell it 
to them. 

18. Select some interesting book and read one or two 

chapters each morning. Pupils will be anxious 
to follow the story and will be greatly interested. 

19. Have pupils give memory gems. This to me has 

been one of the most uniformly successful open- 
ing exercises I have ever tried. I have never had 
a class that tired of it. To have the minds of pu- 
pils stored with beautiful gems of poetry and 
prose, little life sermons, means much to the young 
persons. One of my former pupils ten years later, 
himself then a teacher, told me he valued that above 
everything else I gave him. It had been a source 
of the greatest pleasure to recall these and to add 
new ones at intervals. 

20. Help pupils to better grasp facts by graphic illus- 

trations of them. Pupils have no conception of a 
billion. When we read in our geography that 
the United States raised two and a half billion 
bushels of corn a few years ago, it makes no im- 
pression on the mind. Have pupils figure out how 
long a procession of wagons would be required to 
haul it, counting twenty bushels to the load and 
twenty feet of space for the wagon and team. 
How many times would this procession reach 
around the earth at the equator? The result may 
surprise you unless you have figured on it, and I 
am sure it will surprise your pupils. At least it will 
help them in some little measure to grasp the 



62 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

enormity of the corn crop. Then what becomes of 
all this corn? Another fact that can be graphical- 
ly illustrated is to have the class figure out how 
many tons of water fell upon the school building 
last year. You can find the average rainfall for 
your state or locality. A cubic foot of water 
weighs about 62 1-2 pounds. Then figure out the 
number of tons. Get your patrons to figure on it 
before you tell them the amount or they may doubt 
your veracity, or else your sanity. Dozens of such 
topics may be used, and will make the most interest- 
ing of opening exercises. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER. 



The more one studies the forces which combined 
make a successful school, the more he sees that the 
teacher is the all-important factor. Buildings, grounds, 
furniture, apparatus, books, all these are important — and 
the material equipment of a school makes much differ- 
ence — ^but over and above these and vastly more impor- 
tant than these, is the spirit of the teacher. From the 
contact of mind with mind grows a quickened intellect. 
Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and Garfield on the 
other, these, Garfield said, would make a university. 
The teacher whose soul is on fire with her work, the 
pupil who is willing to learn, these are the essentials of 
a good school. The teacher, one whose heart is in the 
work, one who realizes the dignity and the importance 
of teaching, one who not only knows the subject to be 
taught and the laws of mental development, but has 
that innate tact and worth and personal magnetism that 
draws young people to her, such a teacher is a price- 
less gem. Such a teacher brings order out of chaos. 
The pupils feel the magnetism of her presence. She en- 
ters into their very lives, lifting them to higher things 
and leading the way. 

It is the spirit of a teacher that governs a school. In 
one room is disorder, a spirit of idleness and sometimes 
defiance, carelessness and contempt for all that is pure 
and good and noble in school life — loose paper, marred 
desks, paper wads, marked walls — you know the signs. 
The teacher among her personal friends and intimate 
acquaintances speaks always in contempt of the pupils, 



64 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

calling them her "mean kids," "hateful little imps," "de- 
spisable brats," etc. She longs for the monthly return 
of pay day and the end of the term. She scolds, frets, 
punishes, threatens, bribes and coaxes by turns and in 
rapid succession, and then expresses surprise that the 
pupils of her room take little interest in their work and 
are so "torn down mean." She is lacking in natural 
dignity and seriousness, and wonders why her pupils 
are frivolous. She makes no daily preparation of les- 
sons and cannot understand why the children do not 
study. She is the giddiest of the giddy in talking about 
her beaux, and wonders why the school girls are so rude 
as to speak about their "fellows." 

The pupils of another room — and often the same 
pupils under another teacher — are quiet, orderly, obe- 
dient, respectful and studious. She does not gush. She 
is not petty and has no pets. She is quiet, bright, cheer- 
ful, cheery, orderly, serious, natural, and has confidence 
in her pupils. She speaks kindly and affectionately of 
her boys and girls, neither thinking them faultless nor 
lauding them to the skies. Her every act is an inspira- 
tion to her pupils. She plans her work, she works to 
her plans, and the pupils both consciously and uncon- 
sciously imitate her. She shapes the lives and destinies 
of her pupils for the better. The work of such a teach- 
er is above all money value. The former is dear at 
any price. 

The spirit of the teacher shows itself in the intel- 
lectual attitude of the pupils. The teacher should be a 
living fountain, not a stagnant pool. The growing mind 
is alone fit to teach. The best, the life-giving teaching, 
which makes the pupil's soul thirst for more is not be- 
ing done by men and women who have long since com- 
pleted their education. I pity the high school pupil 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER. 65 

whose teacher adds nothing to his intellectual growth 
each year. Were I seeking an institution in which to 
educate a boy of mine, I should care very little for the 
religious creed of the faculty, but I should prefer that 
there was diversity among them and I should want 
good morals. I should care little for the political faith 
of his teachers, but I should want them honest in their 
convictions. My first and deepest concern would be the 
spirit of the teachers in charge of the school. I should 
want a faculty mature enough to have lost much of its 
freshness, but fresh enough to be growing still. The 
average age should not exceed forty, men growing in 
knowledge day by day, each strong in his specialty but 
pushing forward to new and better things, broad enough 
to grasp life and to see things from more than one 
angle, men whose gaze and hope is turned to the sun- 
rise and not to the sunset, men who are winning laurels 
and making a name in their profession rather than men 
who have won laurels and made a name and are now 
resting. Such teacjiers and the spirit of such teaching 
would show in the intellectual attitude of the boy. 

The spirit of the teacher will show itself in the pu- 
pil's view of life. I often think of one of my favorite 
teachers. I have forgotten most of the lessons he 
taught me from books. Much of the algebra he taught 
me has been relearned or else I do not know it. I 
violate daily many of the rules of syntax he tried so 
hard to teach me, and yet he taught me one of the 
greatest lessons of my life. He looked on life with a 
broad perspective. He was liberal-minded. He taught 
us, unconsciously perhaps, to be generous in our judg- 
ments of others. He opened our minds and our lives to 
the beauties and harmonies of nature all about us. The 
sunset took a brighter tint, the rainbow showed a deeper 
5 



66 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

color, the pansy gave a more delicate odor, life gleamed 
broader and sweeter because of the unconscious inspira- 
tion of this man's life. Cheerfulness, hope, faith, trust 
in the eternal triumph of right should be a part of ev- 
ery teacher's faith. No carping, sour-grained, narrow- 
minded teacher ever did much to develop healthy, hearty, 
liberal views of Hfe in the pupil. One of the greatest 
misfortunes of our schools is the fact that occasionally 
such teachers are found in them. 

The spirit of the teacher is shown in the attitude of 
the pupil in his daily work. She cheers or depresses. 
Constant nagging would drag down angels. If there is 
anything that saps the mental Hfe of pupils, dulls their 
intellectual desires, disgusts them with school and all 
that pertains to it, it is the spirit of the grumbling, 
growling, whining, probing, complaining teacher. Occa- 
sionally we meet such a teacher in the schools, and her 
work is followed by the wreck of childish hopes and 
ambitions. Her very atmosphere is blighting and dwarf- 
ing. Have you ever met such a teacher? I trust not, 
and yet I fear you have. Here is a sample : 

"Now, George, you may tell us about Braddock's 
defeat. Stand up and tell us all about it. You remem- 
ber you had that topic yesterday and did not know it. 
I told you to take your book home with you last night 
and to study all about this topic, you remember. You 
may stand up now and try it again. Stand up straight. 
Get out from the desk. Now, that is better. I have 
told you several times how I wanted you to stand when 
you recite. Put down that rule and take your hand 
out of your pocket. How often am I to tell you about 
that. 

"A little louder, I can't hear you. I told you the 
other day to speak loud enough that you could be 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER. 67 

heard by any one in any part of the room. You must 
remember what I tell you. 

"Now, that is better. Stand up straight. Now, tell 
us all about Braddock's defeat. Begin over again. 
'Braddock was a British general sent over to this coun- 
try to help us,' well that is all right so far. Go on. 
Who was Braddock? Who was he and what had he 
done? Tell us all about him. . . . Well, if the 
book does not say, you ought to have looked it up in 
some other book. Didn't I tell you I wanted you to 
read other histories and not to depend on one text-book? 

"Now, stand up and tell us all you know about Brad- 
dock's defeat. You've had that topic two days, and 
surely you can tell us something. You have got to 
study your history. Take your book home with you 
to-night and study the lesson three or four times. A 
great big boy like you ought to know history. You will 
want to vote sometime. I would be ashamed if I were 
you. Study that topic so you can tell us all about it 
to-morrow. Remember this class completes history this 
year. If you are to be promoted you will have to work. 
We will have an examination on all of these topics, and 
after we have had these lessons over and over again, if 
you do not pass it is not my fault. You will have to 
work, young man, or fail. That is all I have to say 
about it. 

"Remember, ),ou have got to learn this lesson next 
time. If I were you, I would try to use my brains, if 
I had any. It makes me tired when I have to tell and 
tell you what to do and you do not care a cent. I am 
just doing my best to help you, and you do not seem 
to appreciate it a bit. I would be ashamed, and you 
would be if you had the least bit of get up to you. 



68 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

"Now, we must close. For to-morrow we shall review 
to-day's lesson and take down to the bottom of page 
105, down to where you see the big, black-faced letters 
which say, 'William Pitt is made Prime Minister.' I 
wonder what a Prime Minister is, anyhow. Well, you 
may think about that. You may get down to that topic 
for next time. Now, study this lesson well, so that you 
can recite it right off to-morrow. Get a good lesson 
next time. We did not get over the lesson to-day. Let's 
do better next time. Class excused." 

Of course, George left the recitation with a burning 
desire to learn all about Braddock's defeat. The inspira- 
tion was sufficient to do him for life. The inspiration 
from the recitation in other subjects being of the same 
satisfying kind, he withdrew from school two months 
later. The spirit of a teacher sometimes kills. 

The school, large or small, country or town, blest 
with a teacher of broad mold, liberal-minded, active, 
studious, still learning, virtuous and pure-minded, such 
a school is a dynamic force for good in the neighborhood. 
Such a teacher is not worried by bad boys. Her energy 
is not sapped by keeping order. She does not nervously 
pound the desk or the call bell for quiet. Her very atti- 
tude begets quiet without having to demand it. She 
may sit down and hear a recitation. Composure on her 
part gets composure on the part of the pupils. If John 
forgets himself and gets into mischief a look from her 
settles him. She does not have to stop the recitation 
every few minutes to reprimand. She does not nervous- 
ly walk the aisle to keep order while she is hearing a 
recitation. If a boy is devoid of principle and persists 
in doing annoying things she lets him come to her in- 
stead of rushing back after him. Her look of indigna- 
tion and scorn makes him feel his insignificance, and he 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER. 69 

does not try it often. She has learned the lesson of let- 
ting the offender do the walking instead of the teacher. 

When patrons and officials learn that it is the per- 
sonality and individuality, or the spirit of the teacher 
that counts in teaching, then will they discriminate be- 
tween teachers and school keepers, and be willing to pay 
the former living salaries and encourage the others to 
try new fields of labor. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE teacher's LIBRARY. 

What do you read? A look at your library will 
reveal much of your interest and professional zeal. 
Gypsies examine your hand or feel of your head to tell 
your fortune and predict your future. If you want re- 
vealed the future and the fortune of a teacher examine 
that teacher's library and see what books they read 
and have read. A glance at the library will tell much 
of the teacher's zeal, earnestness, and enthusiasm in the 
profession. You can gauge them pretty accurately by 
the books they read. One's library, like one's dress, oft 
proclaims one's character. 

Of course the teacher does not confine herself to 
professional books and reading alone. No one would 
expect such a thing. It would make you narrow. If 
this had been your entire line of reading you would be 
narrow now. The question is, do you ever read pro- 
fessional books and professional literature? What faith 
would you have in a physician who had never read 
medical books, and who did not take and read the cur- 
rent literature of his profession? Would you engage 
a lawyer to defend your interests or to look after your 
business who had never read or heard of the great 
treatises on law? Would you entrust the life of your 
child to the former? Would you intrust your business 
to the latter ? 

Would you then ask parents to entrust the education 
of their child to you when you have never read nor 
heard of the literature that bears upon teaching and edu- 
cation? If you neither read nor care for the current 



THE teacher's LIBRARY. 7^ 

literature of teaching, educational journals, and magazine 
articles of merit bearing upon your work, do you think 
that you are equipped properly for the best interest and 
education of the child? Can you blame thinking men 
and women for criticising and often giving very little 
deference to the teacher's opinion of education? Is the 
mind so much less important that good judgment would 
reject the physician and the lawyer who have done no 
professional study, and accept the teacher, ignorant of 
the literature of her line of work and who had never 
given any study of why or how or what to teach in 
order to best develop the child? Is the mind of less 
importance than the body? Is property dearer to the 
parent than the child? 

If teaching is a profession, or is ever to become 
one, teachers must read the literature of the profession. 
If you are a professional teacher, or if you are ever to 
become one, you must read and enjoy the reading of 
good books on teaching and education. It is not the 
reading alone but' the keen interest and love for the 
reading. Teaching can never become a profession until 
teachers become acquainted with the literature of the 
profession, and even before they enter the profession 
must show that they have made the acquaintance of 
this literature. 

I have little faith in the teacher who does not care 
for good books, and who does not own and read a few 
good books. The teacher who has taught for a few 
terms and who has not at least the beginning of a pro- 
fessional library ought to quit. It is an imposition upon 
the public to continue year after year teaching when 
you do not have interest enough in your work nor love 
enough for the profession to own a few good books 
bearing upon your work. It is a sure sign that your 



12 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS, 

interest in teaching is a mere mercenary interest. You 
teach for the dollars only. That is not so bad in itself 
if you want to give value received for the dollars. Few 
of us could or would teach if there were no salary at- 
tached, but there is a deeper and broader interest that 
is above money value. This broader interest is lacking 
when the teacher does not care to buy and read a few 
books each year upon her professional work. 

It is not the size of the library that counts. It is the 
reading and the study and the assimilation of the con- 
tents of the library that is of value. Your library should 
not only be well read, but steadily growing. New books 
should be added from year to year, educational journals 
and magazine articles bearing upon the present trend of 
teaching and education should be found. They should 
be read carefully and critically. You need not swallow 
without mastication every newly-hatched theory or edu- 
cational cure-all that is advocated. It is the reading 
teacher that has ballast and is not swept away with every 
new-fangled notion that is sprung upon the public by 
the educational demagogue and sensationalist. 

Your library need not be large, but it should be well- 
selected. It should be bought for use and not for show. 
There is much difference between the teacher's working 
library and the teacher's parlor show library. It takes 
but a glance to recognize the difference. In the work- 
ing library there will be the regular text-books used in 
the school course. These are for getting clear, system- 
atic, fresh outlines of the work from day to day. How 
often a five-minutes' glance at the author's treatment of 
a subject at night will clear up two or three days of 
work for the class. It lightens your work and it en- 
ables you to organize what you give to the class. There 
should be a few other late texts upon the subjects. From 



THE teacher's LIBRARY. 73 

these you will get side lights and little points of informa- 
tion to supplement the regular texts. There should be a 
few more advanced texts upon several of the subjects 
from which you may occasionally get view points to 
keep your own knowledge from fossilizing. Advanced 
text-books and other good texts besides the regular one^ 
used by the pupils are the every day tools of the teacher. 

A good dictionary is very essential. This dictionary 
need not be the largest nor latest complete dictionary.^ 
Such a dictionary is proper equipment for the schools, 
but the best working dictionary for the teacher is often 
an academic or a student's dictionary. You will refer 
to these oftener. I know from experience. On my 
study desk are three dictionaries — one is a late edition of 
one of the very best, the others are academic diction- 
aries, late and standard, but books of from five to eight 
hundred pages. I use the smaller ten times to the 
larger once. When you buy a dictionary get one with 
the index. If your time is worth a cent an hour it will 
soon repay you the extra cost. Then you will use it 
oftener because it is more quickly done. 

You need a good, authentic, up-to-date encyclopedia. 
This need not be the largest, nor an expensive one. A 
two or a four-volumed encyclopedia will often be of more 
use to you than a larger one. You will use it oftener, 
just as in the case of the dictionary. In buying an en- 
cyclopedia, do not be gulled by cheap reprints — some- 
thing that treats everything else in the world but the 
things you want, and treats these at such length that 
you are lost in a mass of detail before you have read 
half a page. The young teacher makes a mistake in 
buying a fifty or seventy-five dollar encyclopedia when 
he has not twenty dollars worth of other books in his 
library. Do not be so foolish as to think an encyclopedia 



74 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

will give you all the knowledge that is ever wanted. 
Thinking is what gives you power, not facts. Facts 
serve a useful purpose in thinking, but unless they are 
organized you will get little out of them. An encyclo- 
pedia can give you only general facts. Half a hundred 
other books would be far more useful to you than a 
complete encyclopedia. 

You should have a good, small atlas for ready ref- 
erence. This should be fairly authentic and up-to-date 
at the time you buy it. Look carefully at reprints and 
unauthentic compilations. They are many and often 
costly. You can get a very reliable small usable atlas 
for a dollar or two. The world is changing fast. An 
atlas soon gets out of date. When you buy one get one 
that gives the latest census. The present atlases giving 
the census of 1900 will soon be laid on the shelf after the 
census of 1910 becomes available. 

You should have a few good, authentic histories, his- 
tories of our own country as well as general histories. 
Here, too, good text-books will give you a bird's-eye view 
and an understanding of things often better than the 
larger histories. Get your general outline view first, 
and then as time and opportunity offers get the deeper, 
more critical view by the study of special events and 
topics. Teachers are lacking in their knowledge of his- 
tory. The teacher should have a well-organized epi- 
tome of the world's history clearly in mind. He should 
see the nations come and go as he looks down the ages, 
and see the mile post which each nation marked in the 
growth of civilization. Then he should have a broader, 
closer knowledge of our own country, trying in every 
case to see our national development and progress in 
the light of the world's progress rather than the events 
in themselves. 



THE TEACHER S LIBRARY. 75 

Do not forget biography. It is rich in interest and 
inspiration, not only for the teacher as a person and an 
individual, but it is even richer still in food for the 
teacher as a teacher. The pupil is hard to find who is 
not or cannot be interested in biography if the teacher 
is full of it. His history is his knowledge of the indi- 
vidual. He is hungering for this knowledge of the indi- 
vidual if only the teacher will point the way and show 
an interest in it. I may be wrong, but I fear we are 
going to seed on myths and gods and heroes of the 
remote past. Fairy stories and myths have their place. 
To say the child is interested in them is not always con- 
clusive argument. If the teacher would get out and 
help build it the child would be intensely interested in 
making a snow man. The difference between a teacher 
and an ideal teacher is often the difference between the 
teacher that can inspire an interest in sane, sensible, 
intelligent lines and the teacher that can interest along 
the useless, unimportant lines. At least the teacher's 
library should be rich in biography. No book ever read 
so thoroughly interested me when I was a boy as Frank- 
lin's Autobiography, and no book I ever read had 
greater influence on my life. To this day I find his com- 
mon-sense maxims coming up before me with telling 
force. 

What fiction is more enjoyable than many of the 
biographies of our great men? Read Grant's Memoirs, 
read Phil Sheridan's Life, read the Autobiography of 
the teacher and diplomat, Andrew D. White. Can you 
in fiction find anything more interesting? Then such 
books as Blaine's "Twenty Years in Congress," Benton's 
"Thirty Years," Greeley's "American Conflict," Davis's 
"Rise and Fall of the Confederacy," and Nicolay and 
Hay's "Life of Lincoln" — what teacher can begin one 



76 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

of them and not become thoroughly absorbed in it, Hving 
over again the scenes they describe. In mentioning the 
individual books, I do not mean to imply there are not 
others just as interesting, but these are types and valu- 
able types, types with which teachers should be familiar. 
Some of these should be found in the teacher's library 
and the teacher should know the contents. 

Then there is pure literature, the great poems and 
poets, the classics. Read and own Lowell, Longfellow, 
Whittier, Emerson, and Holmes. Start with Longfel- 
low, and after you have read the others mentioned and 
have them on your library shelves add others as you 
like. Read fiction of course. Begin with the better class. 
Read Hawthorne, Scott, Dickens, Eliot and others. Read 
some of the later fiction but do not waste time on every 
piece of rag-time fiction that comes from the press. 
Teachers do not have time to do it, and it would lead 
to intellectual imbecility if they did. We are smother- 
ing in a deluge of light literature of the rag-time class — 
literally smothering beneath it. Teachers at least should 
be discriminating enough to select intelligently the things 
worth reading, but are they? 

But what about professional reading? If you neg- 
lect professional reading you ignore the profession that 
you are striving to build up. Read psychology, methods, 
history of education, and educational views and discus- 
sions, and keep up on what is going on in administration 
of schools and changes in school laws. This concerns 
you and should be of interest to you. The lives of the 
great educational reformers of the world, the lives of 
a few of our own educators like Horace Mann, David 
Page, and others, should be of intense interest to you. 
Books on management, books on method, books on the 
science and art of instruction, books giving in detail 



THE TEACHER S LIBRARY. 77 

the plans, methods and devices for teaching and handling 
a school, how can such things lack interest for you? 
Many of these represent the best experience of intelli- 
gent teachers for years. They have pointed out to you 
their faults and mistakes. They have shown you the 
way. You are not to follow such books blindly. But 
read discriminately they will become guides to you. They 
will save you from the pitfalls of others. They will 
save you nerve force and strength by giving you clear- 
er notions of what to expect and how to secure it. They 
will help you to govern bad boys and naughty girls. 
Ignore them and you start in to re-discover all the pit- 
falls of the teacher. Then read the plans and devices 
that add spice and interest. They represent successful 
experience. Then the deeper educational works, those 
which point out principles, the books that are for laying 
the foundation for a real science of education and to 
prepare the way for a profession of teaching, shall teach- 
ers neither read, own, nor care for such books and yet 
call themselves teachers, professional teachers? 

Before leaving the subject of the teacher's library, 
I want to caution against some mistakes. I have seen 
the libraries of many teachers. I think I can make 
pretty accurate predictions from looking at the library 
of the teacher's judgment, standing, and teaching abil- 
ity. It is lamentable that so many young teachers are 
gulled into buying sets of books — a set of Shakespeare, 
a set of Irving, a set of Dickens, a set of Scott, a set of 
the library of history, or a set of the world's litera- 
ture, etc. 

Mark you, I do not throw stones at any particular 
collection of books. I have every respect for the agent 
and the publishers of such books. In fact, I always feel 
like taking my hat off to the book agent when I meet 



78 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

one. As an orphan boy I was reared in a home where 
there were more than ten acres of land for each book 
in the home. The few that were there had been sold by 
enterprising book agents, who made them think their 
future prosperity and soul's salvation depended very 
largely upon whether they bought the book or not. If 
he succeeded in making them believe this and would 
knock off fifty cents and board out half the balance they 
would sometimes buy the book. One of these books 
touched me and gave me some aspirations that have 
influenced my life. Blessings be upon the agent that 
sold it, if he is living. If he is dead, may his soul rest 
in peace and prosperity attend his posterity. 

It is not the particular set of books, nor the publisher, 
nor the agent, but the foolish spending of money for 
what will not do the good for you that half of it well 
spent would do. It is a reflection upon a teacher's 
judgment when he allows himself to be talked into buy- 
ing a large set of books, uniform in price and binding, 
and much alike. What does the average young teacher 
want with a whole set of Shakespeare, or a whole set of 
Scott, or of Dickens. Life is too short to read all the 
works of very many authors. You want to be familiar, 
genuinely familiar, with five or six of Shakespeare's best 
plays. You want to know well three or four of Scott's 
best novels. You want to be familiar — to have read, re- 
read and lived over again and again with the author 
Dickens' David Copperfield, his Tale of Two Cities, Lit- 
tle Nell, and perhaps one or two others. But you do 
not have time to read all of Dickens, and if you had 
the time you could better spend it in reading one or two 
of the best of some other author rather than wading 
through the worst of Dickens. No author, not even 
Shakespeare, can always be at his best. The teacher 



THE TEACHER S LIBRARY. 79 

who knows thoroughly the three or four best of an 
author's writings may well afford to be ignorant of the 
others, and use the time in growing familiar with the 
best of some other author. 

Select your library. Put some good volumes of his- 
tory, biography, travel, fiction, and great poems in it. 
Do not neglect your professional books. If you have 
taught ten years and do not have at least twenty-five pro- 
fessional books, you have very little professional spirit, 
and ought to quit teaching or begin reading. Let your 
library be a working library. Do not get all your books 
the same size, shape and binding. Nothing is a greater 
give away on one's library. Working libraries are not 
that way. Libraries bought in bulk, bought for show, 
bought not because you need them or want them, but 
because some firm or agent is pushing their sale, these 
are in large sets. Such is an infallible sign that your 
library was not built up as a working, usable library — 
a growth, and not a full-grown product at one time. 

Your library will be a fair index of your professional 
standing, and the practiced eye can readily paint you 
after examining your library. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

Teaching has two sides. There is the school-room 
side and the pubHc or community side. Each is impor- 
tant. You cannot be a successful teacher without mas- 
tering the first. You can't hold your job long unless 
you have some skill in the second. Your success in a 
community is often measured more by the second than 
the first. In fact, the good you do, the influence you 
exert on the lives of the pupils, the net results of your 
work, is often a reflex of your skill and ability to get 
along with the people, to get their respect, good will 
and hearty co-operation. 

You must know how to meet and mingle with peo- 
ple. You must understand your patrons and many of 
their peculiar neighborhood whims. You must know 
enough of human nature to get along with people, to be 
diplomatic without being weak, and to get your way 
without stirring up determined opposition. Confidence 
in yourself, freedom from excessive or ofifensive egotism, 
a knowledge of the home life and surroundings of your 
patrons, and that rarest of accomplishments, the ability 
to listen and say little, these will help you. It will often 
happen also that you must teach your patrons, and this 
requires more skill than to teach pupils. You must teach 
them as if you taught them not. You must use diplo- 
macy without deceit or sham or show of weakness. 

There will be certain local standards that you should 
respect if you can do so conscientiously. I have taught 
in neighborhoods where dancing and card-playing were 
considered long steps toward everlasting perdition. The 



THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 



8i 



teacher who had gone to a pubHc ball or dared dance at 
a private home in the community would have been met 
with a storm of opposition. In fact, it would have been 
almost as bad as if she had gotten drunk. In such 
communities a teacher would do well to avoid such 
amusements, and if she is skillful she need not commit 
herself upon the matter. Leave the people to guess her 
real sentiment on these things. On the other hand, if 
the teacher has been taught to regard dancing, card- 
playing and kindred amusements as wrong, and then 
teaches in a community where such things are common 
she need not indulge in them. With an ordinary share 
of discretion she need not give offense in declining in- 
vitations to such amusements should they come. She 
cannot as a stranger do much in one or two terms 
toward changing the sentiment of the community either 
for or against such things. After long acquaintance 
she can build up her circle of friends where other amuse- 
ments take the place of these that are under ban. Even 
in time she might create a tolerance for such indul- 
gences, but it is likely to cost more than it will come to. 
More real good can be done by looking pleasant, and 
taking no real active partisan part in either way. For 
my own part I can see no sin in a quiet, civil game of 
cards. But my mother's puritanical views forbade such 
as if it were satan's certain snare. Out of respect to 
my mother's memory I have never learned the names 
of the different cards in a deck, and unless I simply 
applied my own judgment of the meaning of words could 
not tell one card from another. I lost pleasant even- 
ings occasionally during my university course because of 
this "narrowness" as many called it. Occasionally now, 
I must decline an evening out or else be a drag to the 
entertainment feature. I have never offended any one so 



82 



TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 



far as I know, nor lost their respect and good will by 
refusing to take part in a game. The sacred memory 
of my angel mother who died when I was a child has 
far more than compensated me for all the pleasure I have 
lost. For the other person, I can see no harm in a 
quiet game of cards ; for me to break my boyhood prom- 
ise and later resolution would not only rob it of all 
pleasure but would be a positive personal loss. 

There are other indulgences also that the teacher 
must forego for the sake of public opinion. Many a 
young man has lost a splendid opportunity to make a 
reputation of being a good teacher in a community by 
being indiscreet in keeping company. However unob- 
jectionable the girl, and however much he may be in- 
terested, he must remember that much of the world 
dislikes a lover if that lover be the school teacher 
of the neighborhood. People that think or care very 
little what the young man in the store or the postoffice 
do, will resent too much company keeping for the teach- 
er. The voung woman teaching should be even more 
careful about keeping company. It is not good policy 
to do it, and it will be more pleasure in the long run 
to be with young people, but do very little keeping of 
young men's company. 

With your patrons you may be more free. Strict 
etiquette might dictate that you wait until they have 
called on you. If you wait you will know few of them 
and meet these after trouble has come up and they call 
on you to make complaint. The teacher, like the preach- 
er, if there is strong personality and good address, can 
ignore many little formalities, and no one will question 
it. Make the acquaintance of as many of your patrons 
early in the term as you can. Be cordial, be pleasant, 
be brief. Do not fawn. Do not sfush nor bubble over. 



THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 83 

Do not find fault. Do not tell all your plans for the 
year or make glowing promises. Be yourself, but be 
your best self. Do not talk shop all the time. Do not 
talk Shakespeare, politics, religion or the higher crit- 
icism. You might soon interest them in the second and 
third, but a discussion would probably do you no good. 
The first and last they probably know little about and 
care less. Your ability to make friends and to mix with 
people is limited often by your ability to talk to the 
other person about something in which he is interested. 
The hardest clam will open if you know how and 
where to touch it. 

Learn how to shake hands. You are often judged 
by the handshake. The hand, the eye, the voice — these 
if used properly quickly overcome prejudice and barriers 
of opposition and build up forces in your favor. If you 
can shake hands with a firm, hearty grasp, meet the eye 
with frankness and composure, and speak in a pleasing, 
even, well-modulated, quieting voice, you have the 
strength of Gibraltar at your back. If you have knowl- 
edge and skill and personality and character to back 
the first impression made by such a combination, you 
should be invincible. If your handshake, however, is 
loose and passive, Uriah Heep-like, if your eyes wander, 
and your voice is screechy or faltering, you should begin 
at once to overcome these obstacles. They lie in your 
road to success as a teacher, and you should lose no 
time in trying to overcome them. 

Many teachers lack poise. If you prefer, you may 
think of it as personality or force of character. What- 
ever term you may use to name it, it remains true that 
many teachers lack the ability to command attention and 
respect, and to mingle readily among the best business 
and professional men of the community. It is sometimes 



^4 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

want of experience, it is sometimes want of knowledge, 
and breadth of vision. Teachers are too often narrow. 
They do not have the world view of things they should 
have. It is sometimes bookishness and lack of contact 
with the practical business side of the world. I am 
sorry to think that it is sometimes caused by the feeling 
that the fact you are a teacher is something to be apol- 
ogized for. Teachers are so often inclined to whimper 
and whine, to seek to be pitied and petted. They brood 
over their imaginary troubles. They conclude the world 
does not properly appreciate their efforts. They want 
the public to grant them special favors and attentions 
instead of commanding the respect and attention of the 
community by weight of their own strength and per- 
sonality. 

The teacher should strive first to be a man or a 
woman in the best sense of the term, strong mentally, 
morally and physically, with personaHty and independ- 
ence, but without rudeness. He should command re- 
spect as a thinking person, avoid eccentricities and parti- 
san measures, have opinions of his own, but without 
flaunting them in the face of others to provoke combat 
or opposition. Then to the respect due him as a man 
will come, if his teaching justifies, the additional respect 
due him as a teacher. 

The teacher should ever be the apostle of education 
and high thinking, a living example of the best product 
of the school and its worth. To be a consistent preacher 
of right living, high thinking, and the power of education 
in the progress and development of the state, he himself 
should be a worthy example. Of all persons the teacher 
should be the champion and the defender of the school 
and the cause of education. He should be a high ex- 
ample of the best product of the schools and education. 



THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL-ROOM. ^5 

His power, his carriage, his character, his thrift, his in- 
dependence, his zeal in good works, should bear testi- 
mony and be the strongest argument for the schools. 
A genuinely good teacher, who has the intellectual and 
moral force to be a man among men, such a teacher in 
a few years will create a public sentiment that will de- 
mand good schools, buildings, equipment and teachers 
of the best, in the community in which he teaches. His 
influence will bear fruit for generations. 

As long as the teacher is a weakling, a figure-head, 
a crank, an upstart, a person whose opinion — if he has 
one — on business or on the questions of the day would 
be hooted or laughed at by every level-headed business 
man of the community, there is little sentiment for 
schools or education developed. If the whole energy of 
the teacher is exhausted in keeping the problems solved 
in advance of his class, if his personal appearance, his 
carriage, his address, his thrift, and his thoughts are be- 
low the average business man of the community, many 
of whom have little 'Or no education or school training. 
it places the school on the defensive. The hard-headed, 
but sober-minded, man of affairs will look upon the 
teacher as a fair sample and typical product of the 
schools, and will not regret that he lost such opportuni- 
ties when he was young, or perhaps he will thank his 
stars that he did not have such things forced upon 
him. 

My contention is that the teacher should be a man 
or woman of strong personality, a worthy product of the 
school, a person whose judgment and opinion of schools, 
of business, of the questions and the issues of the day 
would be such that it would be respected by the best 
people of the community. His opinions should have 
weight. He should have all the elements that go to 



86 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

make up a successful business career. He should be a 
man of force and character, whose influence would be 
felt in any line he should take up. With such teachers 
the schools will become what they should be. Such 
teachers will get results — results of the teaching act and 
results in the material equipment of the schools. Build- 
ings will improve, conditions will improve, furniture and 
proper apparatus will be forthcoming. The community 
will soon begin to look upon the schools as safe invest- 
ments, every dollar of which yields golden dividends; 
then the community will be generous. 

When teachers possess the strength, the force, the 
poise, the diplomacy they should, good things will fol- 
low. Some of the criticism and carping about the 
schools will be changed. It makes my Scotch-Irish blood 
to tingle when I hear a few of these questions discussed. 
If it is not the teacher's business to defend the school 
whose is it? 

One of these things that should arouse a teacher is 
the insinuation still met in a few localities and among a 
few people — the would-be blue-bloods, with more inheri- 
tance of money than brains — that the public schools 
are pauper schools ; or at least schools for poor people 
only. Such sentiment in free America seems to me 
born of ignorance or treason. I first heard it advocated 
by a physician, a native of New York, a graduate of a 
church endowed school and a product of it. His alma 
mater was supported by the contribution box passed at 
regular intervals in his church to which many a poor 
washerwoman contributed a far greater percentage of 
her earnings each time than the same physician did in a 
twelve months. Yet this good hypocritically pious, but 
deluded man, ridiculed the thought of the state support- 
ing a university at public expense. He kept private tu- 



THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 



87 



tors to teach his children that they might not have to 
attend the public school to mix with all "the rabble, as 
he declared. There could not be a better indictment of 
his own education. He had failed to grasp the spirit of 
American liberty and American institutions His ideas 
were those of effete aristocracy and wealth. Ihe best 
lesson his boy may ever learn will be when son,e son o a 
washerwoman, or some poor paper boy or news seller 
meets him in competition in after life, and he goes down 
ignominously in the contest. The chances are if the 
contest comes, and it will come in the present genera- 
tion or in a near generation, the sturdy booth ack will 
win This same physician did not think himself a par- 
taker of charity by getting his mail at a government 
postoffice, by drinking from a public fountain or having 
his house and lot protected from the lake by Uncle 

Sam's break water. „, . . , ^. 

It is the duty of the state to educate. This is not the 
rich nor the poor, but all. The state's schools are main- 
tained as a public necessity, and for the whole people. 
The patron whose 'child attends the public school is no 
more an object of charity or a pauper for that reason 
than he is for patronizing the postoffice, using the city 
paved streets or using the street lamps at night, ihere 
are many things the public can do and do much more 
efficiently than they can be done otherwise. Education 
is one of these things. Every man, woman and child 
is benefited by good public schools, the bachelor and the 
childless family as well as the family of a dozen chil- 

'^ Another fallacy often advocated is that the people are 
not able to support good schools. Nothing can have a 
less foundation in fact. Let us think about it It is a 
principle that is almost axiomatic that no people can be 



88 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

pauperized by local taxes applied to local purposes. 
Now, very little of the school taxes ever leaves the 
immediate community. The teacher is often one of the 
community, and many times of the immediate neighbor- 
hood. If the teacher is from a distance he usually 
boards in the neighborhood and spends much of his 
earnings in the neighborhood. The percentage of his 
salary that leaves the community is not large. The ex- 
pense of wood, repairs, and supplies are usually spent 
in the immediate community. The money that leaves 
the community is, as a rule, not as much as the state 
pays toward the maintenance of the school. No people 
can be pauperized by the money properly spent on their 
schools. It is only a short time until the increased earn- 
ing capacity of the more intelligent citizenship soon be- 
gins to pay good dividends on the investment, even 
though part of the money should find its way out of the 
community. 

When the cry came to us from Cuba in 1898, no one 
claimed that we were too poor to help. When later 
disturbances occurred, we sent our soldiers to maintain 
peace, and our secretary of war and assistant secretary 
of state were sent to restore order. No one said it cost 
too much. Count the cost of our war with Spain and 
place against it the money spent in the same time for 
schools and in fighting ignorance and then say if we are 
able to have good schools. Spend the money to train 
our young people to future usefulness which is spent in 
defense against imaginary foreign enemies and the world 
could not stand against us in a generation. 

Few Americans but point with pride to our growing 
navy, now world famous and we hope effective. The 
launching of each new war ship is a thrilling event to the 
nation. The daily papers for weeks tell of its prog- 



THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 89 

ress and every trifling event is carefully chronicled. 
Count how long the cost of one of these vessels would 
support one of our state universities. The mission of 
the university is to build up, to increase human intelli- 
gence and happiness. The mission of the war vessel is 
to destroy life and property and to make desolate. 

Figure on these things, and then say whether or 
not we are too poor to have the best of schools. 



CHAPTER XL 

GOOr-. TEACHING CONDITIONS. 

The life of the school is the teacher. There is less 
difference in pupils than in teachers. Under a weak 
teacher pupils will take every advantage they can. Un- 
der a strong teacher the pupils will behave as well as 
they can. The difference in rooms is usually a difference 
in teachers. If the equipment of rooms are the same or 
practically the same, and the teacher is not over burdened 
with pupils, the spirit and condition of the room will 
be determined by: 

1. The teacher's ideal of what constitutes good con- 
ditions. 

2. The teacher's strength and personality in getting 
results in conduct and work. 

3. The former training and efficiency of the class. 
This will be seen more in the matter of attainment than 
in conduct. I have seen the worst of classes in conduct 
transformed into a class of good behaviour in three 
months by a change of teachers. 

The teacher's ideal of what constitutes good condi- 
tions counts for much. This ideal is a composite prod- 
uct, a result of all the former experiences of the teacher 
with her natural gifts. Training in good schools, teach- 
ing under good conditions, professional study, and nat- 
ural high ideals in life count in one's ideal of school. 
If the teacher is satisfied with dirty desks and scraps of 
paper on the floor she will get these conditions. If 
sloven, half-executed work suits her she will get it. If 
disrespect, suUenness and angry retorts will pass with 
her she will get them. If phe is willing for the boys 



GOOD TEACHING CONDITIONS. QI 

to whittle on the desks, they will whittle. To the prac- 
ticed eye a five-minutes' glance at a school-room will 
show pretty well the spirit of the teacher and her ability 
to get results. 

High ideals of school work coupled with common 
sense and executive ability will get results. High ideals 
will prevent you from being satisfied with low standards 
in conduct or work. Common sense will guide you over 
rough places, and executive ability will have nerve force. 

Common sense will keep you from attempting the 
impossible and then worrying because you cannot ac- 
complish it. It will keep you out of difficulties in the 
school-room and in the community. So many teachers 
are lacking in this great characteristic of the plain, hon- 
est, thinking citizen. In a fit of anger they set a punish- 
ment impossible to be inflicted and then compromise 
themselves by withdrawing it. Arbitrary rules with no 
reason behind them often get teachers into trouble. Sen- 
sible rules, common sense rules, rules that would stand 
the test of good .judgment, judiciously applied, bring 
good fruit. Setting a specific punishment for all pupils 
who for any cause go outside the school ground, locking 
the doors at a certain time regardless of the weather, 
forbidding any pupil from leaving the room, etc., the list 
of arbitrary, unreasonable rules are many. Now we 
shall agree that a healthy pupil should not have to leave 
the room once in three months. Restrict it, be positive in 
the matter, but do not forbid it, and then be compelled 
to vary the rule or do worse. 

Most of the trouble in the school-room comes either 
from lack of action on the teacher's part or action that 
is hasty and hence injudicious. The teacher of experi- 
ence and one who has profited by experience could give 
numerous cautions to young teachers, all of which 



92 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

summed up might be the advice to use common sense. 
Among these cautions and suggestions those of most im- 
portance might be named as follows : 

1. Remember that order in the school-room does not 
mean deathlike stillness. — There is the noise of work — 
a noise pleasing to the ear of the successful teacher, and 
the noise of idleness and confusion. The first is as in- 
spiring to a good teacher as the second is discouraging. 
The stillness thai comes through fear of punishment 
may be the worst of conditions. Under routine drill to 
quietness under the eagle eye of a so-called disciplinarian, 
the pupils are often on the borderland of anarchy. They 
have never learned the lesson of self-control nor the rea- 
sons for good behaviour. 

Order means opportunity for effective work. The 
mind of the pupil and the mind of the teacher in per- 
fect contact; this is order. When a pupil is preparing 
his lesson the author or text becomes the teacher, and 
there must be perfect unity between his mind and the 
thought of the text. Order, good order, permits this. 
Anything that disturbs this contact is detrimental to the 
school and is that far poor order. The criterion, then, for 
the teacher as to what constitutes good order is how 
nearly are conditions perfect for proper contact of the 
minds of the pupil and the teacher. 

2. Do not lose your head. — Composure counts for 
more perhaps in the school-room than elsewhere. A ner- 
vous teacher makes a nervous school. Teachers some- 
times pace the floor like a wild animal in a cage. Learn 
the art of sitting to hear a recitation without becoming 
lazy. Stand with composure when you stand. If you 
cannot govern yourself you will find it hard to govern 
others. Too many teachers are afraid there will be dis- 
order. They can neither sit nor stand with composure 
during a recitation. They fidget and make the pupils 



GOOD TEACHING CONDITIONS. 93 

fidgety. They watch the bad boy suspiciously. They 
walk back to his desk repeatedly to see if he is in mis- 
chief instead of waiting with composure, and if he does 
get into mischief punishing him for it. If you show that 
you expect a boy to be bad he will seldom disappoint 

you. 

"Look for goodness, look for gladness, 
You will find them all the while." 

Many, many times have I heard teachers say to pupils, 
'*Sit down and be still," when I wanted to say to them, 
''Go and do the same thing." 

J. In the long run pupils will give you the respect you 
deserve. — If you think you have the meanest pupils in 
the world they will not disappoint you. If you treat 
the pupils with firmness, and courtesy and respect they 
usually return to you in kind. When after a few 
months the majority of your pupils do not respect you, 
and have confidence in you, begin to examine your- 
self. In changing teachers, especially if your predeces- 
sor has been popular, you may for a few weeks feel 
that the pupils are not in sympathy with you. Tact and 
good judgment will win them if you have wearing qual- 
ities. Do not resent their feeling of respect for the for- 
mer teacher. Tr} to be worthy their respect, and when 
you leave they will regret your leaving just as much. 

4. The teacher zvho has ceased to learn becomes a 
phonograph, and can do nothing but repeat. — When you 
have something fresh, something new to you, something 
worth while to bring to the recitation, do you know how 
anxious you are for the time to come. The very gleam 
of the eye tells to pupils that you have a message for 
them. You cannot have the enthusiasm that appeals 
to childhood and continue to depend upon an old stock 
of goods. 



94 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

5. You zvill find the school-room a good barometer. — 
When I began teaching, bad days came and I worried 
about it. Things went wrong, lessons were not well 
prepared, boys got into trouble on the playground, and 
girls were idle. I was often in despair. But perhaps 
the very next day was a delightful one. Everything 
went so well that I disliked for night to come. It took 
me several terms before I found out the relation of the 
weather to conduct, but it exists. The weather barom- 
eter that hangs on your wall is little better in its predic- 
tions of change than are the careful observations of the 
conduct of the pupils. Ask a dozen teachers at night 
how the day passed, and see what a majority will vote 
the same way. A bright morning, clouds gather and 
thicken — a bad day. Clearing weather — good work in 
the school-room. Observe if it is true. 

6. A pleasing voice, freshness and vivacity in the 
teacher, quickens and inspires the class. — Her questions 
come as if she were really seeking information. They 
are crisp and to the point. The answers are cheery as 
if they were meant to impart information and not simply 
to tell something already known. Her face beams at a 
good answer, making the pupil believe he has done his 
teacher a favor by imparting the information. A cheery 
smile and a quick question that in its answer shows the 
error in the first follows a wrong reply. Discussions 
are bright and animated, and full of life, but always re- 
spectful and courteous. She is in strong contrast to the 
teacher that talks and talks in a monotonous tone until 
half the class are sleepy and the others thinking about 
everything else save the subject she is trying to explain. 
One draws out information and stimulates thought. The 
other pours in second-hand information and deadens 
thought. One sharpens intellect. The other dulls it. 



GOOD TEACHING CONDITIONS. 95 

7. Proper seating and grouping pupils, the calling of 
classes, the distribution of wraps, the collection of papers, 
the passing of classes, the dismission of school at recess 
and at night, the answering of questions, the passing of 
pupils from the room or across the floor — all these do 
much to make or mar the school. — A well-arranged pro- 
gram that indicates not only the time and order of the 
recitation but of the study period as well will help. 
Teachers make woeful failures often from no other cause 
but that they fail to plan carefully in advance just what 
to do, how to do it and when to do it. 

8. The afternoon dismission to the careful observer is 
a fair index not only of the day but the teacher's grasp 
of her school. — Teachers often hurry to dismiss the chil- 
dren, anxious to be rid of the responsibility. The pupils 
rush from the door with a jump and a shout as boister- 
ous as a wild group of Comanche Indians. Of all the 
periods of the day, the one just before dismission is the 
one when the teacher should show most composure and 
deliberation. Of all the periods of the day, the pupils 
are most at the teacher's mercy. Let them understand 
that quiet and decorum precede dismission. If it re- 
quires one minute, ten minutes or half an hour, let them 
know that no lines pass until all is quiet and orderly. 
Then at the customary signals, the lines pass quietly, or- 
derly, respectfully. 

9. Running, jumping, or boisterous conduct in the 
school-room is never in place. — The school-room should 
be looked upon as a pleasant workship, not a skating 
rink or vaudeville theater. Best results always come 
where pupils are decorous in the room at all times. 
Quiet, homelike conversation is in place, but no rude or 
boisterous conduct at any time unless you expect to pay 
the penalty with interest in days to come. 



CHAPTER XII. 



KEEPING GOOD CONDITIONS. 



Your school began in September. Your pupils re- 
turned to school, most of them glad vacation was over. 
They entered with high resolves to make this year of 
work the best they had ever done. If you made a good 
beginning, the first few weeks of school strengthened 
these resolutions in many of your pupils. If you planned 
your work well each week, if your program was thought- 
fully prepared, if you assigned lessons carefully, and if 
by your every act you showed without stating it that you 
were master of the situation and that you knew what you 
wanted to do, how you wanted it done, and why you 
wanted it done, the first few weeks of the term passed 
pleasantly, and well begun may not be half done, as the 
adage goes, but it counts for much. 

October's frost has now painted the landscape a 
myriad hue, and November's hazy days are fast approach- 
ing. The novelty of school is beginning to dull. Pupils 
have grown used to the new teacher and stand no longer 
in such awe. The truth is that for both teacher and 
pupils, school has settled down to the real thing. Some 
of the high resolves of the opening of the term are be- 
ginning to weaken under the regular routine of school 
work. Dropping nuts have overcome the good resolution 
of a few, and they have missed a day or two to lay up 
the winter's stock. Missing will be much easier now 
for these pupils the rest of the year. Some of the lar- 
ger boys who remained at home to sow the wheat and 
help gather the corn are now entering. In the main they 
are good boys, worthy boys, boys whose greatest ambi- 



KEEPING GOOD CONDITIONS. 97 

tion is to work faithfully in school as well as on the 
farm, but their entrance has broken into the class organ- 
ization and unity. The teacher and the pupils from now 
on recognize the school as a genuine business. The real 
problem of government begins to face the teacher. Then, 
too, school interest must not begin to drag, or else the 
holiday spirit will overbalance school spirit. Unless 
there is genuine interest some, often many, may become 
so infatuated with Santa Claus that they cannot study, 
and begin holiday vacation early. Lost time is hard to 
recover, and lost interest at the middle of a term is 
seldom completely restored. 

Let us trust that your beginning was good. It is 
far easier to form than to reform. Definite standards of 
conduct, order and system, good common sense rules and 
regulations, good judgment, a knowledge of boys and 
girls, insight into the spirit and motives that prompt ac- 
tions in young people, frankness and honesty with pupils, 
and above all the saving grace in the teacher of a sense 
of humor and the knowledge of the purifying and vivify- 
ing power of a hearty laugh — if you have understood 
these and exercised them from the first day, reforms will 
not be necessary. Still followed faithfully, they serve as 
correctives and prevent the necessity of reforms later. 

How then may the teacher keep conditions good? 
What are the things to guard against in order to keep 
the school atmosphere wholesome, the interest good, and 
the conduct up to the standard? There are a few cau- 
tions which every teacher of experience would give the 
young teacher. These watched well and the teacher will 
grow in the power to govern and instruct. They will be 
found the key to a good school. While they do not 
cover all points, no teacher ever succeeded thoroughly 
and yet neglected many of them, and no teacher is a 

7 



98 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

complete failure if many of them are in every way suc- 
cessful. Perhaps in naming some of these I may restate 
a few things mentioned in the chapter just preceding. 

/. You must have good order. — Not simply quiet but 
intelligent quietness. Children are controlled by inter- 
nal and external motives. Appeal to the former always, 
but be ready to use the latter should the former fail. 
You must govern your pupils else they will run away 
with you. If you are weak they will take every advan- 
tage of you they think they dare to take. Do not blame 
the children if your room is littered, desks marked and 
marred and scratched — they will soon learn to do it if 
you are a negative quantity. They will never do it if 
you are the positive force you should be. 

Can you leave your room for ten minutes or half an 
hour and return to find things moving on with proper 
decorum and orderly manner? If you cannot do this, 
why not? The best teachers can do it. A class whose 
former record had been bad, in two weeks' time under 
another teacher were entirely trustworthy, and during a 
ten months' term were never known to do a disorderly 
act, though the teacher was frequently out of the room. 
Where the power? Where the fault? It can be done. 
Good order implies that each pupil is able to do his best 
work at any or all times without annoyance or exter- 
nal disturbance from others. Some pupils may be idle, 
but their idleness must not be catching. It must not dis- 
turb those who want to work. This is to be your crite- 
rion. Make it a constant study how this and the other 
may affect the proper work of your pupils. This will 
answer as well as it can be answered what you may 
permit and what you cannot permit in your school. 

Good order in the recitation demands that the mind 
of the teacher and the pupils' minds must focus upon 



KEEPING GOOD CONDITIONS. 99 

the same thought. This is the basis of all school rules. 
How does it affect the unity of mind of the teacher and 
the class? If it tends to unity it is good. If it tends 
to destroy unity, it is bad, and should not be allowed. 
If it is incompatible with unity it should at once be for- 
bidden. Let the young teacher learn to measure con- 
duct by this standard, and she will soon solve the various 
perplexing questions, little in themselves but big to her. 
''Shall I permit whispering?" "Shall I permit a child to 
get a drinlc during school hours?" "Shall I stop a reci- 
tation to reprimand a bad boy?" The best answer is 
found in the criterion — do that which will result in the 
closest possible contact between the mind of the teacher 
and the mind of the pupils in class. 

Of course, in the application of the above principle 
we must often choose between two evils. But the criterion 
is a good guide. If the conduct of the pupil will disturb 
the mental unity of the class and teacher more during 
the recitation than the reprimand, by all means stop the 
recitation and give the reprimand. Be sure, however, 
that you give the reprimand so effectively that it will 
seldom or never have to be repeated while the pupil 
comes to school to you. 

2, Guard zi'ell your recess. — It is a critical time for 
the teacher. Often it may be even detrimental to the 
school. It is in many ways the test of the teacher's 
power to govern. If she has quick insight into child 
nature she may get some of the deepest glances at the 
real nature of the pupils — the best and the worst traits 
of character — at this period. Much of the disorder of 
the school-room has its origin at recess. The playground 
and the open-air are the places for games and sports. 
The school-room may be a place for relaxation and 
reasonable conversation and jest, but if you value peace 



lOO TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

of mind and good conditions for school work, never, 
never let it become a place for games, boisterous con- 
duct, or running and jumping at recess. 

Pupils should from the first day enter the school 
room as though it were sacred ground, dedicated to 
cheerful, pleasant, profitable work. I do not mean that 
there should be a long face and a woebegone expression 
upon entering the school-room, but the feeling of frivolity 
and boisterousness must be laid aside. Running and 
jumping and boisterous conduct in the room at recess 
makes the pupils familiar with such conduct until it is 
no longer shocking to them when repeated after recess. 
There should be a feeling of impressiveness but cheer- 
fulness upon entering the school-room which is conducive 
to study and right conduct. Much of the sacredness, 
the calm, restful sweetness which comes to us upon 
entering the church would be lost if all kinds of noisy 
games and boisterous carousals were indulged in before 
the opening of the church service. 

The teachers should be at school at least half an 
hour before the time for opening school. If the teacher 
is habitually late she should reform or resign. The 
noisy disorder and pandemonium that so often reigns 
in the school-room when the teacher is late is detrimental 
to school during the day and often for days. Some of 
the worst disturbances of the school will be prevented if 
the teacher is first to reach the building in the morning. 
If pupils bring lunch and remain at school during the 
noon hour the teacher should remain also. One teach- 
er at least should remain during the noon hour. The 
extra work and tax on the teacher during this time is 
far less than the nerve force required to set things right 
that will happen during the year if she is absent. 



KEEPING GOOD CONDITIONS. lOI 

Proper decorum must be insisted upon when pupils 
enter the room after intermissions. All racing and shout- 
ing and games should stop at the first tap of the bell. 
The pupils then prepare to enter the room. This will 
depend upon the size, location and entrance of the build- 
ing. In cities and larger towns where hundreds of pu- 
pils must be handled, the regular march may be neces- 
sary. In smaller schools, falling into line without re- 
gard to grade may be all that is necessary. In schools 
of middle size pupils may fall into line by grades. At a 
second signal, after all is quiet, the lines pass to the 
rooms in good order, the boys removing their hats at 
the door as if they were entering the home or a church. 
No pushing, shoving or racing is permitted. The teach- 
er who tries and is persistent and uniform about it, ran 
by her kindness and conduct, readily secure this order 
and decorum without seeming to force it. 

J. Be systematic and orderly in calling and dismiss- 
ing classes. — No teacher can long maintain order and 
decorum in the school-room without some system in call- 
ing and dismissing classes. One of the most signal 
failures I ever knew — a normal school and university 
graduate too — could be traced largely to his lack of 
system in calling and dismissing classes. As one class 
was dismissed the next started to the recitation seat and 
without signal. They raced, and scrambled and rushed 
for certain favorite positions. They came pell-mell, 
hurry-scurry, each trying to get there first, and it never 
seemed to dawn upon the teacher that there was a better 
way or that the disorder bred here hung about the work 
of the school like a millstone. 

Each pupil should have a definite position for the 
recitation. If the room is arrang-ed so that there are 



I02 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

separate recitation seats the pupil's position in class will 
be determined by : 

1. The location of the pupil's desk and his natural place 

in the line as the class passes to recitation. 

2. The kind of classmate with which he will be thrown 

at recitation. Some pupils are so congenial that if 
thrown near each other in the recitation, neither 
seem to be able to behave. Two boys, reasonably 
good when separated, may not be able to sit near 
one another without kicking, pinching and whisper- 
ing. Be sure that they are separated in recitation. 
Good order in the recitation, like good order in the 
study period, is often influenced by the teacher's good 
judgment in seating pupils. 

There should be a definite signal for calling classes. 
It may be a gentle tap of the bell, a rap of the pencil, or 
by calling ''One" by the teacher. I have always pre- 
ferred the latter. The teacher may then call the class 
from any position in the room. At the signal the pu- 
pils begin to get ready to rise, if the class is to pass to 
the recitation seat. If the recitation is to be in the 
study seat, all books, papers, pencils, etc., not needed 
in the recitation are laid aside at this signal. The sec- 
ond signal, "Two" is given, and each pupil stands quiet- 
ly by his desk, each knowing in which aisle he is to 
stand. After all have risen, a third signal, "Three" is 
given, and each passes quietly to his place in class, and 
at a gentle nod of the head of the teacher or a fourth 
signal all are quietly seated. 

If the recitation is to be at the study desks all books, 
pencils and papers not needed in the recitation must be 
laid aside. These are always disorder breeders, and 
serve only to distract attention. Flowers in the spring- 
time may often become a nuisance, as they come too 



KEEPING GOOD CONDITIONS. ^«3 

often between the pupil's mind and the lesson. The 
same is true of perfumed cards and numerous other inno- 
cent looking little things. 

The same plan of calling a class may be used in dis- 
missing it. After the class is seated, give ample time 
for them to get all necessary books and papers for pre- 
paring the next lesson before calling the next class. 
Never seem to be in a hurry. Have your classes follow 
directions promptly, but haste is waste of time. 

4. Train yourself to pleasant tones of voice and com- 
posure.— Ferh^ps the teacher's voice is one of the strong- 
est elements that go to make up that which we call per- 
sonality. Even tones quiet and soothe. Guttural tones, 
harsh, rasping, high-keyed tones grate upon the ear and 
get disorder. Your command should be gentle, but 
none the less firm. Believe in your own ability to gov- 
ern. Unless you can do this you are apt to fail. Give 
every command in pleasing tones, courteously, firmly, 
never letting the voice show doubt or fear that it will 
not be obeyed. A ' sharp, rasping command with the 
faintest lack of self-confidence breeds contempt and leads 
to a trial of strength. If teachers could hear themselves 
for a day, repeated with the exact inflection by the 
phonograph, many of them would cease to wonder why 
their rooms are noisy. 

Composure in actions, along with firmness of voice, 
gentle tones and decision of character makes the teacher 
master of the situation. They make or mar the teacher's 
record. Given these with enthusiasm and you should 
have no serious trouble in keeping conditions good in 
your school after you have made a good start. Your 
term is usually pretty well established by the time it is 
half over. Your success is determined by that time. 



I04 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

The first good resolutions have been strengthened and 
become well fixed. You have shown your ability or 
lack of it in keeping conditions good, and the rest of 
the year should, if this is good, pass without much to 
discourage. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL? 

In an institute of something over a hundred teachers, 
nearly all of them comparatively young in the work, I 
was once asked to give a ten-minutes' talk on what makes 
a good school. I am glad that I was, not because any- 
thing which I said was so helpful to the young teachers, 
but because it set me thinking by what things I judge 
teachers and the school. My notes show the following 
points, although I am not sure of the exact wording of 
the talk: 

I. The teachers and the pupils of a good school 
should he happy.— ^ good digestion, a clear conscience, 
and reasonable success are three things that should make 
any man or woman happy. A healthy child has the 
first and second, and their ideas and hopes and ambi- 
tions of success are and should be at school age very 
largely wrapped up in the successes of the school and 
the home. If the teacher is unhappy the school be- 
comes unhappy. A low nervous state, indigestion, wor- 
ry either about school or other things, trouble in the 
home, sorrow over friends or family, uneasiness about 
financial matters or anything that saps the energy or 
spoils the sleep of the teacher, is detrimental to the 
school. Anything that disturbs the majority or even- a 
considerable minority of pupils interferes with the school. 
If the teacher is thoroughly discouraged over school 
work or if a very large percentage of the pupils are 
displeased with the teacher after the first month, there 
can be no whole-souled, happy work and conditions in 
the school. If you or any considerable number of your 



io6 



TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 



pupils are unhappy, try if possible to remove the cause. 
Your results in teaching will be infinitely better, the 
work will be less taxing to you, you and the pupils will 
get more out of life at the time and more out of life in 
the future if all are happy in the school-room. To the 
practiced eye five minutes will tell whether the work is 
a work of pleasure to teacher and pupils or whether it 
is a task to both. 

2. The whole atmosphere of the school must he con- 
ducive to good work. — While the teacher and the pupils 
are happy it should be that quiet happiness that makes 
for good work. Children may be boisterously happy. 
The idea of a good time with many boys is the loud- 
est noise they can make. It is the quiet, composed hap- 
piness springing from interesting work well done that 
gives the best atmosphere of the school. It is the spirit, 
the atmosphere, the social or psychological conditions 
growing out of the relations existing in the school that 
gives life to the school and that educates in the broad- 
est sense. This is intangible and invisible, but it is 
easily discerned, and to the discriminating principal or 
superintendent it will form very largely his basis for 
judging the teacher and the school. In associations with 
visiting principals in my own school and in visiting other 
principals, a frank estimate has often been given of the 
relative success of teachers. It is surprising often how 
the visiting principal can in five minutes rate a teacher, 
and this rating will in the main agree with the regular 
principal. The practiced eye of the principal should, 
like the practiced eye of the physician, see more in a 
minute than the unskilled would in a month. For my 
own part I trust very largely to the spirit and atmos- 
phere existing in a room, the social echo of the school, 
and it Is only occasionally that I am far wrong. 



WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL.'' io7 

J. The personality of the teacher and its influence on 
the school. — Does she know what to do, does she know 
how to do it, does she have the dignity to get this done 
promptly and well without it ever entering the mind of 
a pupil to question its propriety or her ability to get it 
done? Your personality should be strong enough that 
it is rare indeed that any pupil dare to dispute your 
authority and then you should have weight of character 
enough to prevent open rebellion. The personality of 
the teacher, like the atmosphere of the school, is intangi- 
ble. Someone has said that personality is "cultured in- 
dividuality." It is individuality with the corners ground 
off and polished. It is the individuality that gets results 
without fighting for it. It does not offend in taste, in 
physique, or personal bearing. It is the personality that 
pleases and yet makes the pupil, the parent, or the public 
to hesitate before it dares express a criticism. 

The personality of the teacher reaches the outward 
as well as the inward. It is read in the teacher's dress 
and bearing. No. teacher can afford to neglect her dress 
and personal appearance. Dress need not be costly, but 
it should be in taste. To the lady teacher, a becoming 
dress, a spotless collar, an appropriate ribbon, hair neat- 
ly brushed, teeth white as pearl, nails immaculate as 
ivory — these are potent influences and will win over 
thoughtless boys and careless girls when all the switches 
in a mile square, and other means of punishment known 
to the modern school, would fail. Spotless attire is es- 
sential to the lady teacher, but a man will find it of 
scarcely less importance. There must be no suggestion 
of the dude and the dandy, but clean linen, well kept 
hands and nails, clean teeth, uncontaminated breath, 
clothing that fits and is free from dandruff and dust — 
everything of the gentleman but nothing of the dude — 



i<a8 



TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 



these will count in your personality and go to determine 
the worth of your school. 

4. The good school has interest and enthusiasm, hut it 
must not he of the soap-huhhle variety. — If you have the 
first insight into human nature, if you know the first 
thing about swaying pupils in mass, you know that it 
is easy to waste energy, get up steam and chase fleet- 
ing phantoms in school, make a tempest in a teapot, and 
be no farther along at the end of the year educationally 
than at the beginning. The faddist in the school-room, 
the teacher that periodically discovers the coveted pan- 
acea that will relieve the pupils from all good, old-fash- 
ioned, hard work, is as dangerous as the demagogue in 
politics. Interest and enthusiasm should be well direct- 
ed. Sanity should guide it. It should drive toward a 
worthy goal, it should be tempered by rationality and 
common sense. The interest should as soon as possible 
be transferred to self interest. One of the most enthu- 
siastic teachers I ever knew was of the hypnotic, spell- 
binding kind. Pupils waved their hands, snapped their 
fingers, and jumped up and down in their eagerness to 
tell what they knew of a topic. Strange to many — not 
strange to the man who knew something of good teach- 
ing — very, very few of the pupils of this teacher either 
continued school after the graded school course or took 
much interest in self-directed study or reading in after 
life. 

5. In a good school the teacher loves the work. — We 
have much unrest in teaching. For years teachers have 
been inviting dissatisfaction. They have brooded over 
fancied evils, poor salaries, and lack of tenure of posi- 
tion, until the great mass of them have become infected. 
In teaching as in other things, if you look up the stars 
will guide you, if you look down the sewer may beckon. 



WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL? ^^ 

The young teacher often does the best work because 
she is happy and contented with her lot in the first 
school. When she begins to tire with teaching, when 
she begins to look forward to the time when she can get 
more congenial work— in the store, in the office, or 
possibly in the home— she grows more and more dissatis- 
fied with school, she grumbles more and more about low 
salaries, an unappreciative public and bad children. In a 
good school the teacher is in love with her work and 
feels that for the time being nothing would tempt her to 

leave it. 

6. A good school will have a well-arranged program 
giving not only the recitation periods but the study pe- 
Hods'^as w^//.— Systematic study is essential. As a uni- 
versity student I found my time planned until at certain 
times each day I found myself wanting to take up cer- 
tain studies. Just as one may become hungry at their 
usual time of eating, so should one come to desire to do 
work at certain times. Too much variation of a pro- 
gram weakens it -in the minds of the children. This 
program should be prepared with thought and care. 
There should be a proper balance of study. Here is 
where good judgment in the relative value of studies is 
shown. I visited a sixth grade once where as much 
time was used each day on spelling as upon any other 
study. Now I believe in spelling. I believe we are 
neglecting spelling, but I cannot think it is worth as 
much and is justified in having as much time in the 
sixth year as any other study of the school course, surely 
not if the proper amount of attention to spelling has 
been given in the first five years. 

7. In a good school the modern studies— music, draw- 
ing, manual training and domestic science — will he recog- 
nized.— Tht two last will be needed worse in some 



"O TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

schools than others. The old-fashioned home life is fast 
disappearing. Whether this is better or worse is not 
ours to discuss. The fact is that under the modern trend 
pupils are not taught to do the homely and valuable 
tasks that was so common forty years ago. Then the 
boy made his sled, his wagon, his hobby horse, and his 
ball bat. Now he buys them and loses the greatest good 
of all, the skill and the development in making them. 
He got his manual training then in his home life, now, 
except on the farm, he gets scarcely any of such train- 
ing, and must depend upon the initiative of the school, 
else go forever without it. The girl then was busy with 
helping her mother in the house work. She learned to 
cook, to sew, to make quilts, to wash, iron, and scrub. 
In other words, she got a complete and efficient training 
in domestic science in her own home, and often had not 
only the practice in doing it but had an intense liking 
for it. Much is changed now. The school must come 
to the demands and needs of the time and give the girl 
some touch with, respect for, and knowledge of this es- 
sential work or she never gets it. 

Music is more an intellectual and cultural subject. It 
needs no defense. The time is coming, and let us 
hope before many generations, when as nearly all the 
people can sing ordinary music as can read the ordinary 
book. Drawing, not necessarily the decorative art which 
so often is called drawing, needs no justification. It 
leads to closer observation, it is needed in the practical 
affairs of life, it develops so many of the powers of the' 
mind that as a cultural study it needs no defense. A 
good school will recognize these modern studies. In 
the country, the manual training may go more to the 
farmer's needs, it may be more closely allied to agricul- 
ture than in the cities. School gardening is far more 



WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL? "I 

essential to the city child, however, than to the country. 
In the crowded districts of the city, it is a rest and 
recreation together with intense interest in a new and 
valuable line of thought to tend the small school vegeta- 
ble garden. In the country, or in the city district, where 
each pupil has a vegetable garden at home, and where 
the father often is skilled in the work of furnishing 
vegetables for the market, the school garden is not worth 
the time and energy put upon it. Like fashions in hats 
and dress the teacher who feels that she must be up-to- 
date, must follow the fads and fashions of New York, 
Chicago, Washington and other places regardless of the 
difference in conditions, will have pupils spend an hour a 
day in tending a vegetable garden when they had better 
be sent home to help their parents to tend the family 
garden. 

The modern studies, however, must be kept in their 
legitimate place. When manual training has for its 
avowed purpose the making of a carpenter or a mechanic, 
when the study becomes strictly practical instead of edu- 
cational, it is out of the proper province of the common 
school. Even the high school is not to make doctors, 
lawyers, clerks, mechanics, but to make thinking men 
and women, who then can with time and direction soon 
develop into these others. The very purpose of the 
school is to give in a large measure those things that 
have very little connection with the later life of the 
individual. The increased power to think, to analyze, to 
understand, the higher ideals of life, the hopes, the as- 
pirations, the ability to see the world in a broader light 
and from a wider horizon — these are the essential things 
after all. To save the boy from his dwarfing environ- 
ment, to kindle in him ambitions and desires, to give him 
broader views of life without making him unreasonably 



112 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

discontent with his own lot is the great purpose of the 
school. His life will be narrow enough in his little 
niche without making his school training narrow him 
still more. The most impractical of the so-called prac- 
tical men often want every lesson in school to be a les- 
son to save the time of apprenticeship instead of a les- 
son to develop higher thinking power. 

8. In a good school the teacher or teachers will be 
professional. — They will have studied the problems of the 
school and have high ideas and ideals of what it should 
be and of its place in the development of the life of the 
child. They will look on the purpose of the school, and 
hold to these essentials even at risk of the criticism of 
faddists. A thorough educator refused a principalship 
at a better salary. When asked why, he replied that the 
qualities the board were looking for must be found in 
a carpenter, a football coach, and a peanut vender, and 
as he did not desire a position along either of these 
lines, it would not be worth while to accept a position 
requiring special qualifications along all of these lines. 
Eight hours a week was to be devoted to manual train- 
ing. He could use say a plane and a hammer very 
well, but he had never had any desire to become a car- 
penter, else he would have taken it up. He was ex- 
pected to take charge of the boys' athletics, having daily 
drills and preparing them for the annual festivities. He 
cared little for sport, and believed the playground should 
be distinctly the place for self-initiative of pupils, feeling 
that the greatest lessons of school life came from the 
fact that pupils here were left free from the direction 
of teachers so that they might have some chance at self- 
direction. The third requirement was that he should be 
able to drill vaudeville school plays, sell popcorn, pea- 
nuts, lemonade and other similar things to procure funds 



WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL? "3 

for decorating the school, improving the grounds and 
furnishing money for athletic sports. If he was to take 
up commercial life as a serious matter, he preferred to 
go into business. These three lines absorbing most of 
his time and sapping his energies made him prefer, to 
remain where the thought and energy of the principal 
was directed to the development of mind and charac- 
ter. 

In many schools the demand is for the carpenter, the 
football coach, and the peanut vender combined for 
principal rather than the man who sees the deeper prob- 
lems of mental development. 

p. The teacher or teachers should he loyal to their 
school. — The teacher who teaches in a district or school 
where she from any cause dislikes the place, will not 
teach her best school. In cities some teachers teach in 
certain districts only under protest, and never do their 
best work. I should not seek to hold a teacher in my 
school when I knew she was deeply dissatisfied with me 
or the school. Her work would be forced, and she 
would unconsciously put less enthusiasm into it. Just 
as the pupils should love their school and their teacher 
and feel that they would not exchange it for any other 
school, so should the teacher feel that her lot is well 
cast. The patrons should be as loyal to the school and 
the teacher as the teacher is to the school. Loyalty of 
teacher, pupils and patrons, will make a prosperous and 
successful school. 

10. A good school is properly heated, lighted, venti- 
lated and carefully looked after by a trusty janitor. — 
Thousands of eyes are ruined yearly by poor light, pu- 
pils are injured in health by poor heating and ventilation. 
The care of the building counts for so much. Proper 
janitor work is as necessary as any other work. It is 



114 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

hard to keep clean and live in a hog pen. It is hard to 
think elevating thoughts and live in dirt and dust and 
cobwebs. The schools, the churches and the hotels are 
the best advertising agents of any neighborhood. A 
good school near by often increases the market value of 
a farm from ten to twenty dollars an acre. The same 
is true of a church. The best class of emigrants, the 
best citizens who want to buy a farm to live on and to 
cultivate do not care to go to localities where there is 
not a majority, a strong, working, active majority of the 
people interested, vitally interested, in such things. En- 
vironment makes the price of property. The neighbor- 
hood of good schools and good churches is worth more 
per square rod than the neighborhood which is content 
to let its children be educated in a building fit only for 
a sheep shed or to attend a dilapidated church. 

II. The good school has decorations for its zvalls. — 
These silent but effective teachers grow into the lives of 
the pupils. Simplicity, plainness, but good taste should 
be the test of the school decorations. Get good pictures 
— not necessarily costly ones — get good, plain, but ar- 
tistic frames, select pictures that appeal to children, and 
yet are artistic, and let them be hung in good taste on 
the wall. Do not overcrowd, study the simple and the 
artistic in arrangement. In selecting, do not forget the 
value of the portrait as a school picture. Washington, 
the father of his country; Lincoln, true and noble, a 
man of the common people ; Longfellow, poet beloved by 
all; the list is a long one — these features looking down 
daily grow into the lives of the pupils. Then landscape 
views, Landseer's animals, pictures of homes and famous 
paintings, the list is almost endless. To these may be 
added a few good statues. Good taste in the selection 



WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL? "5 

and the funds to buy with will make any school-room 
what it should be as to decorations. 

These are some of the first things that I should look 
for in judging a school. Buildings and grounds and nu- 
merous other things cannot be touched upon. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



TEN TIME KILLERS. 



School time is precious. Each minute should count. 
The formation of correct habits is the greatest end of 
school work. Surely then the proper use of time is essen- 
tial to a successful school. We lose time in so many ways. 
It often looks as if teachers tried to waste time pur- 
posely. We cultivate lazy habits in pupils by letting 
things drag. They learn to snooze over their lessons, to 
grope about mentally, to allow their minds to wander to 
irrelevant things, to put off until the last minute what 
should be done promptly and well. 

The teacher should not seem to hurry. The intense 
nervous tension sometimes found is detrimental. But 
the school-room should be a workshop in which pupils 
are intelligently and profitably busy. They should be 
happy in their work, but they should be working. The 
work should be done well, this brings even to little chil- 
dren the feeling of satisfaction, the feeling that it is 
worth while in school. The work should be intelligent, 
educative work. In the modern school the strength and 
worth of the teacher and the principal is shown in the 
intelligence and breadth of view with which the school 
work is selected. We are going wild on busy work. 
Interest is an essential to profitable work, but all work 
in which the teacher may get up interest and enthusiasm 
may not be profitable work. To say that because pu- 
pils are easily interested in raffia weaving, sewing, man- 
ual training, etc., does not necessarily prove that these 
subjects are essential to the best development. The 
child's interest is usually a borrowed interest, at least is 



TEN TIME KILLERS. ^^7 

often a borrowed interest. You could get up just as 
much interest in building a snow man, in jumping the 
rope, in rolling rocks down a hill or splashing water in 
the brook as in the raffia work or domestic science. It 
requires more than the fact that children may be made 
to like a subject to justify its use in school. The pu- 
pils should be busy and busy at intelligent, educative 
work. They should be happy in that work. Happiness 
usually comes from the feeling of doing something, 
and doing this thing well. 

But let us notice some of the time killers. They are 
numerous. The ten mentioned below are probably the 
most common among young teachers, although it is not 
assumed that the list is complete. 

I. Lack of definite plans for the day. — For the teach- 
er who has never made definite plans for her daily work, 
it is hard for her to understand the loss of time and ener- 
gy — time and energy on the part of the pupils and even 
more so, time and energy on the part of the teacher. 
You should, from, the course of study, know what is 
expected of the grade in a term. Divide this by the num- 
ber of months you have to teach. Look over the work 
carefully, examine the text-book, note what supplemen- 
tary work you think the text will need. Then at the be- 
ginning of each month write out briefly, but specifically, 
what you want the class to do each week of the month. 
With this general outline before you, work out in ad- 
vance each day's program for the first week. At the 
end of the week prepare in the same way each day's 
program for the second week, etc. It will take but a 
few minutes, and it will be profitable minutes to you 
and to the class. 

If you find that you cannot do the work planned for 
the month, do not worry about it, but do well as much 



ii8 



TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 



of it as you can and pass the rest over to the next 
month. If you find you can complete the work of the 
month well, and have extra time, do not by any means 
keep the class marking time and waiting. Take up the 
work of the next month. The important thing is that 
you set yourself and your class a certain task — I do not 
mean to imply that it is an unpleasant task — for each 
month, each week and each day of the week. This 
lesson plan made at times of leisure or when the mind 
is free to consider the work as a unit will be a criterion 
for judging your own progress with the class and will 
be a valuable guide in planning how best to present the 
subjects to the class. It will save you much time and 
energy and worry at the recitation periods when every- 
thing must be centered on the work before you. 

2. By allowing slovenly work. — I believe that from one 
to two hours a week are lost in the fifth, sixth, seventh 
and eighth years, in the subject of arithmetic alone, be- 
cause the pupils in the first four years are not properly 
drilled in the four fundamental processes of addition, 
subtraction, multiplication and division. There should be 
snap and vim and hustle in the early number work. 
The tables should be learned and learned thoroughly. 
Pupils should be drilled in rapid combinations. It may 
be well to know how to develop the multiplication table, 
but knowing how to develop it will never take the 
place of knowing it. Time is wasted in developing in 
early number work when it should be used in knowing, 
in thorough committing to memory. When asked how 
many seven times seven, the child should answer forty- 
nine as quickly and with as little hesitation as if asked 
his own name. The drill should be so perfect the men- 
tal response is instantaneous. 



TEN TIME KILLERS. 119 

5. By rusty machinery. — There are many things 
about the school that must be looked upon as the ma- 
chinery of the school. Order and decorum are great 
time savers, but red-tape for its own sake is to be 
avoided. Keep your thoughts centered on what you 
want done and how this can be done with least loss 
of time. I was at the opening of a famous normal 
school a few years ago. The freshman class was to be 
divided into three sections. Two teachers, normal teach- 
ers too — teachers whose very methods are supposed to 
be worthy models — spent over forty minutes in making 
the division. It was tiresome to the class and tiresome 
to me to observe. In less than ten minutes I should 
have passed about pointing to each student numbering 
as I pointed, "first," "second," "third," "first," "second," 
"third," etc. Then I should have asked all those num- 
bered "first" to take one part of the assembly room. 
All numbered "second" to take another. All those num- 
bered "third" to take another. Then in ten minutes 
more by passing slips of paper I should have had the 
names and addresses of each and the class could have 
been dismissed. 

Time is wasted in the passing of classes, the distribu- 
tion of wraps, collecting of papers and necessary school 
movements. Teachers often lose from two to five min- 
utes by a clumsy method of collecting or distributing 
papers. I saw a good part of a recitation period lost 
recently by a teacher in a city school where I was visit- 
ing. She wanted the composition papers collected and 
redistributed. There seemed to be no system or fore- 
thought either in collecting or redistributing, several 
pupils getting their own papers back for correction. 
Some such plan as follows would have saved time, en- 
ergy and discipline : 



I20 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

"Time." All pupils stop work and sit in easy, grace- 
ful positions. 

"Papers to the right." Each places the paper to the 
right side of the desk where the monitors can reach it 
easily. 

"Collect." Pupils in back row of seats acting as 
monitors quickly and quietly collect the papers in regu- 
lar order to the front. 

"Exchange." Monitors exchange papers in some reg- 
ular order. 

"Redistribute." Monitors pass back to their seat, 
placing a paper on each pupil's desk as they pass. 

With these five simple directions the compositions 
could have been collected and redistributed for correc- 
tion. No time is lost. There is no noise or confusion. 
The very matter of collecting helps in order and decorum. 

Oil up the machinery of your school-room and see 
if you cannot gain from ten to twenty minutes each 
day and at the same time get better results. 

4. Lack of scholarship. — If a teacher has ballast and 
good judgment, no amount of well-organized knowl- 
edge will hurt her. Narrow vision, poor judgment as 
to what is essential and what is not, gets clouded explana- 
tions. This leads to lack of interest and loss of time. 
Clear-cut, definite knowledge on the part of the teacher 
will put life and vim in the teaching. 

5. Grinding over and over again things already 
knozvn well. — Nothing is more detrimental to mental 
growth. Teachers too often fail to discriminate between 
thoroughness and mere mechanical repetition. Be thor- 
ough, but be alive. There is much drill work to be 
done. There is no substitute for it. We fail often in 
the newer education because we neglect drill and re- 
view, but there should be life in the work, not mere 



TEN TIME KILLERS. 121 

marking of time and perfunctory repetition. Nowhere is 
drill more necessary than in number work, and yet this 
drill need never drag or become uninteresting. One of 
my fourth grade teachers had done good work in the 
mechanical part of number work. Her class had been 
accurate and rapid, and I had allowed them upon sev- 
eral occasions to challenge other rooms. In fact they 
had done well the foundation work in numbers so essen- 
tial to good work in arithmetic in the upper grades. 
To test them I asked the class to vote upon which they 
would prefer, a fourth of a day picnic out on the lake 
front or to spend the same time ciphering against some 
other room. They voted almost as a unit to cipher 
against the other room. They had been doing the grind- 
ing process, it is true, but do you think it had been 
marking time with them? Every minute had been a 
pleasure to them because each had been pitted against 
some other. This had made the work a contest and a 
pleasure instead of a grind. It is the grind without the 
pleasure and over something well known that kills. 

6. Assigning lessons without any thought on the 
teacher's part of their contents. — Many teachers would 
find it hard to solve the problems which they assign to 
the class in the same time the class has for preparation. 
The result is that they do not get over the lesson next 
day. This leaving off part of the lesson day after day 
soon gets a habit in the class to prepare only the first of 
the lesson, feeling confident that they will never get 
down to the last of it. Teachers should know the con- 
tents of the lesson they ask the class to prepare. They 
should assign only what the class can do well in the 
time. Then each member should feel that he is held 
strictly accountable for an honest effort to get the whole 
lesson. 



122 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

7. Not teaching pupils how to prepare lessons. -^T\ve 
greatest service a teacher can do for a class is to teach 
them how to study. Pupils waste hour after hour in 
honest effort with little accomplished and much discour- 
agement by not knowing how to apply themselves to 
the work before them. One of my boyhood spelling 
books has marks to show that I had studied the lesson 
more than sixty times. I wanted to be faithful, I thought 
I was doing the right thing. But I was not. I should 
have learned the lesson by heart so that I could have 
spelled it from beginning to end in less than sixty times 
study if I had really studied. What a saving of time if 
my teacher had taught me how to study my spelling, to 
think each word over slowly and carefully as I spelled it 
to myself, to center my best efforts on the words in the 
list which I was not sure of knowing, instead of studying 
all alike. Then if I had been taught to study I should 
never have kept careful account as to how many times 
I studied the lesson. My thought was to satisfy myself 
and my teacher that I had tried, instead of getting the 
lesson. Frequently spend a recitation with pupils until 
you feel sure they know how to study and apply them- 
selves. One of the greatest compliments a former pu- 
pil ever paid me was when he said that I taught him 
how to apply himself and how to study. 

8. Talking too much. — The greatest fault of all, the 
greatest loss of time perhaps, when teachers as a body 
are considered, is the fault of constant and often useless 
talking. Teachers repeat over and over again. They 
scold and keep it up and keep it up. They explain and 
explain and keep it up and keep it up. 



TEN TIME KILLERS. 133 

'Tull man)' a teacher you may know, 

Along life's slippery pathway walking, 
Who left off thinking years ago, 
But kept on talking." 

To spend time in further explanation and elucidation 
of any point after it has dawned clearly on the pupil's 
consciousness is a waste of time to the pupil and has a 
tendency to destroy interest in the subject. To explain 
a thing to them and then to explain it "in other words" 
and ''in other words" and then again "in other words," 
as many teachers do, is deadening to mental growth. I 
am not speaking of repetition of knowledge in review to 
deepen and impress it firmly on the mind. I am speak- 
ing of new knowledge. When the teacher has explained 
a point briefly, definitely, understanding^, he catches the 
gleam of recognition in the pupil's eye, showing that the 
explanation is understood. Further talk and explana- 
tion is useless and even detrimental. 

p. Answering useless questions. — If the teacher is 
weak, there will be a growing habit in many pupils to 
ask useless questions as well as to ask over and over 
again for repetitions. I have known pupils who would, 
unless restrained, ask for the repetition of half the words 
in a spelling lesson. Speak distinctly, and teach pupils 
to listen attentively. It is the part of the pupil's duty 
to listen attentively to every word of the teacher that 
is addressed to him or his class. Another habit of many 
teachers is after a question has been properly answered 
by some pupil, to again state the answer herself. Noth- 
ing is more deadening either to the pupil who first gave 
the answer or to the interest of the class. If a pupil an- 
swers a question accurately, no further comment is neces- 
sary. For the teacher to repeat the answer is worse 
than a waste of time. 



124 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

Then there is the telltale pupil, who is always ready 
to run to the teacher with little troubles, always being 
imposed upon by others. Every teacher of experience 
knows such pupils. Discourage tattling, but make sure 
the child is not being imposed upon. A little Italian 
girl kept coming to me and to her teacher with all sorts 
of imaginary grievances, until she came in one day with 
her tale of woe when I had weightier matters to attend 
to. Rather more vigorous than polite, I told her if she 
came to me with such hatched-up troubles again I should 
punish her. It had the desired effect. Show pupils who 
have all kinds of imaginary troubles how it becomes a 
duty for them to put themselves in harmony with other 
pupils and to live agreeably with the school family. 
Then with a careful lookout that they are not being 
imposed upon deny them the right of coming to you with 
tales of woe, else you may use much time every day 
chasing phantoms. 

10. Failing to keep the room ventilated. — No one can 
work vigorously in contaminated air. It will be a great 
day when every school-room will have proper heating 
and ventilation. For some years I have worked where 
there were adequate provision for forcing pure, warm, 
filtered air into every room in abundance, while the 
foul, impure, dusty air was being constantly forced out. 
The value of pure air and ventilation can readily be 
seen when one compares such conditions and contrasts 
them with many school-rooms. No school can do proper 
work without proper ventilation and heating. Do not 
neglect this important matter in your school. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE VALUE OF A HIGH SCHOOL COURSE. 

These talks are directed especially to young teachers. 
It is presumed that most of these are teachers in the 
grades or elementary schools. Your highest success 
and greatest usefulness must be measured by the lasting 
impressions you leave on your pupils. The worthy pu- 
pil who catches fire and ambition from you to be some- 
thing and to do something, who years after can truth- 
fully say it was from you that he got his aspiration for 
a high-school course, these pupils are to be the reward 
to you that is above all money value. I feel that I am 
justly proud of the percentage of my grade pupils who 
have gone to high school, and of my high school grad- 
uates that have taken a college or university course. 
Yale, Columbia, Vanderbilt, Tulane, Purdue, Chicago 
University, four State Universities, a number of normal 
schools and smaller colleges have had my high school 
students later in life. Most of them have made good. 
Many of them have done well, and in life are doing 
something for themselves. Whether I have contributed 
anything to these young men and women can hardly be 
told. But I rejoice in their success. Occasional letters 
from many of them, and greetings I get when we meet 
by accident, are some of the rewards which come to the 
earnest teacher — rewards above any money value. 

I believe in education. I believe that right education 

^will increase the value of the man. It will not make 

him do less work, but more. It may change his line of 

work, but if the necessity comes he can with all the 

energy and good cheer of the ignorant man do work 



126 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

no matter how humble and often more of it for his edu- 
cation. Not only that, but the boy of courage, and with 
a desire strong enough, if he have health, and no one 
depending upon him for support, can earn his way 
through the best high school or college. It is the meas- 
ure of the grit of the boy. The world turns aside to let 
the man pass that knows where he is going. To kindle 
the fire of ambition in a capable boy, to call out the 
latent force and set it in the right direction, that is the 
highest office of the teacher. 

Twenty-five years ago, when a boy of fourteen, in a 
country school, I had as teacher a young man to whom 
I owe much. It was his first term of school. Some 
patrons, in fact many, would not have voted the term a 
success, but he reached many of the boys, and myself 
among them. From him I received my first desire to be 
a teacher. From him dates my first desire for an edu- 
cation, and the faith in myself that I could secure it. 
Measured by the world's standards he has not been a 
great success, but to me his teaching was of the inspira- 
tional kind. It helped me to get my bearings, it created 
worthy desires and ambitions. Later, I have told him of 
the results of his teaching upon my own life and ambi- 
tions. With a modesty that is unassumed he begs me 
not to mention it, and thinks that it was simply a matter 
of chance. 

A few years ago a father wrote asking me why he 
should send his son to high school. I wrote him my 
reasons for doing so. Perhaps these reasons may serve 
some young teacher for urging some other boy to go. 
They were at the time the best I could summon, and are 
yet as good as I could state in the limits of a personal 
letter. 



THE VALUE OF A HIGH SCHOOL COURSE. "7 

1. If your hoy is worth a hag of shucks, it will make 
a far more ahle man of him, mentally, morally and phys- 
ically.— Th&vc are exceptions, it is true, but the excep- 
tions only prove the rule. 

2. High school teachers should be, and, if the high 
school is a good one, are, broad gauge, scholarly men and 
women, educated in our best colleges, normal schools and 
universities. — For a boy to come in close contact with 
such manly men and womanly women as should and do 
form the faculty of good high schools is above all money 
value to the boy. The magic mental touch that comes to 
the boy in contact with scholarly men and women of 
character, lifts him out of the hum-drum of Hfe and 
makes a thinking man of him. 

J. It zvill increase your boy's money-makung capac- 
ity^— Tht best statistics available show that the illiterate 
man in the United States earns less than $300 a year. 
The man with a common school education earns $400 
a year. The graduate of the high school earns over 
$600 a year. Sup'pose your boy works from the time 
he is twenty until he is sixty years old— an earning period 
of forty years — figure the increased earning capacity the 
high school education will give him, and then answer 
if you think it will pay. There are some exceptions, of 
course. I take it that your boy is an average boy, as 
bright or brighter than his father was at his age. If 
he is an average boy, this will represent his chances. 
Fools and dudes are exceptions to all rules. 

4. A good high school course will give a broader Held 
of activity to your boy. — In every walk of life the de- 
mands are more and more for men and women with 
more than a common school education. Firm after firm 
announces that their employees must have at least a good 
high school education. The mental discipline and self- 



128 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

control given by a good high school course will give 
self-direction and grasp of conditions to your boy long 
after the Latin endings and algebraic formulae which 
gave the discipline have been forgotten. It is discipline 
for life's duties that is the real worth of the high school 
to the boy. 

5. The more thorough the education of your hoy the 
larger will he his adaptihility to different kinds of work. — 
Blessed is the man whose resources and intelligence are 
such that he can readily — if circumstances demand it — 
find a dozen ways to make an honest living for himself 
and family. Here it is that the great superiority of the 
culture-giving, broad-gauge high school course is shown 
over the trade-fitting, quick-time, short-cut, get-ready- 
in-a-hurry trade or business school. 

6. The high school course will prepare your boy for 
the deeper and broader training of the university. — If he 
is made of the right material he will get the university 
training for himself, or urge you to help him to secure 
it. If he does not go to the university the high school 
course will fit him to become a successful leader in busi- 
ness or lay the foundation for a professional course or 
career. 

7. The discipline and training of a high school course 
will not only increase the earning capacity of your hoy, 
but it will increase his living capacity. — He will see more 
beauty in the evening sunset, God's wonderful watch 
care in the stars overhead, and more and sweeter frag- 
rance in the pansy at his feet. It will develop character 
and manhood, give him thoughts and ideas of his own, 
make him broader in his views of life, and raise him to 
a higher standard of manhood. 

8. The high school course should, and the chances are 
that it will, discover the hoy to himself. — This is the 



THE VALUE OF A HIGH SCHOOL COURSE. 129 

greatest discovery any man can make — his own dignity, 
and worth, and capacity, and inclination — these things 
discovered and the man has a stronger power of his 
own to make Hfe a success. If the high school discov- 
ers the boy to himself it has been of infinite value to him. 
p. The high school course will increase your hoy's 
chances for distinction in his life work. — A high author- 
ity, after much study of census returns and biographical 
dictionaries, reaches the following conclusions: 

( 1 ) That an uneducated child has but one chance out of 
150,000 to gain distinction as a factor in the prog- 
ress of the age. 

(2) That a common school education increases his 
chances four times. 

(3) That a high school education will increase the 
chances over the common school twenty-three times, 
or make his chances for distinction eighty-seven 
times as great as if he were without education. 

10. A high school education will make your hoy a* 
more positive force' in his community, his state, and the 
nation, socially, economically, and politically. — With 
many noted exceptions, in the future as in the past, our 
real constructive men, men whose monuments are their 
work, will be men trained and disciplined in the best 
schools of the country. 

If your boy will work in school, if he has any desire 
whatever to continue in school, if he has the requisite 
amount of gray matter, or if he has the capacity of the 
average American boy, give him the advantage of a 
high school course. It will pay you and it will pay 
him. Make some sacrifice on your part if necessary to 
do it. Do not spoil him by giving him too much money. 
Teach him the worth of a dollar and how to earn one 
honestly. Hold him to strict account of every cent he 
9 



I30 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

Spends, the day and date and for what spent. Teach him 
from the very first to handle your money as he should 
handle the money of an employer, accounting for his al- 
lowance each month without quaking, quibbling or miscel- 
laneous accounts, and he will handle his own money bet- 
ter later in life. 

Keep in close touch with his teachers, give them your 
loyal support, see them frequently and make inquiries 
about the boy and his work. For the boy's sake do not 
take his part against the teachers if he should be repri- 
manded by them for any cause. Do not tell his teachers 
too much about his excellent qualities at home, and how 
smart he is. They may soon know him as well as you 
do and maybe better. If they point out some of his 
faults, listen to them and do not fly off the handle — the 
chances are that they can see scores of faults that you 
have never discovered. Show your genuine interest in 
the boy, their work and the school. Take at least as 
much interest in the trainers of your boy as you do in 
the trainer of that young horse of yours which you con- 
fidently hope will take first prize next fall at the county 
fair. Show your interest in the boy as much as the horse 
and the chances are the results will be as good. 

Understand your boy, and expect much from him. 
Let him know you expect much from him and that you 
shall keep close track of his work and his conduct. 
Study his report each month. If his grades are low, 
question him about it, and question to the point. Know 
the subjects he studies and who teaches each subject. 
Perhaps you know nothing in the world about the sub- 
ject yourself, but question him and let him justify the 
study and what he is getting out of it. It will help you 
and do him much good. It is this daily co-operation 
and sympathy, this close oversight, the constant keeping 



THE VALUE OF A HIGH SCHOOL COURSE. ^2>^ 

in touch with the boy and his work, and your loyalty 
to the teachers and the school that will determine largely 
your boy's success. 

Yes, send your boy to high school, and these are my 
reasons for you doing so. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



A TALK ABOUT SPELLING. 



Most of the talks in this book are on the questions of 
school management. Perhaps it would not be out of 
place to speak of the teaching of a few subjects. This 
and the two following chapters are devoted to the teach- 
ing side of the work. Spelling and arithmetic, the teach- 
ing of these concern every teacher whatever her grade of 
work. Literature is a neglected study in many of our 
schools, and yet a life-giving subject. That is my reason 
for including that important subject. 

The suggestions given below on spelling may help 
young teachers. I have used them at times in my own 
teaching and found them useful. No attempt is made 
to be profound. If the hints are helpful, that is enough. 

Two General Plans of the Recitation. 

I. The Oral Method. — This is the method by which 
most of us learned to spell twenty-five years ago. We 
memorized the letters of the word in correct order, as- 
sociating the sounds to some extent with the letters them- 
selves. There was a time when the method was almost 
universal in the schools. It has some evident advan- 
tages : 

1. Pupils are taught to pronounce words as they learn 

to spell them. 

2. Pupils acquire facility and readiness in dividing 

words into syllables. 

3. It is often a saving of time. 

The method has some disadvantages also. Among these 
may be mentioned the following: 



A TALK ABOUT SPELLING. 



33 



1. Often pupils who spell well orally are poor spell- 

ers when writing, and writing is the primary test 
of the speller. 

2. The principal use of spelling is in writing. To 

spell correctly in writing, the muscles of the hand 
and arm must be trained to execute quickly and 
accurately the thought of the mind, 

3. The number of words spelled by each pupil in 

oral spelling is less than in the written lesson. 
No teacher ever accomplishes much in any subject 
without the hearty interest and co-operation of the class. 
Any little device or method that gives you an increased 
and deeper interest in the subject on the part of your 
pupils is helpful. Variations in the recitation often adds 
spice and interest to what otherwise might be dull rou- 
tine. In oral spelling I have found the following varia- 
tions to be good : 

/. The position of the class.— As a rule, I prefer the 
class to stand jn straight line, with arms gently 
folded, while the teacher stands quietly where she 
can have the eye of each member of the class. 
When a word is missed, the pupil spelling it cor- 
rectly ''passes up," always as a mark of courtesy 
going behind the pupil "turned down." I have 
found, however, that occasionally for a few days 
to let pupils be seated during the recitation period 
while the teacher seated quietly before them pro- 
nounces the words, gets interest and attention that 
the usual standing order does not get. 
^. Never pronounce the zifords in regular order. — You 
may pronounce up the columns, down the columns, 
or across the columns, but never let the pupils know 
in what order the words may be given to them. 



13+ TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

They will not then be tempted to pick out and study 
the words which are likely to come to them. 
J. It is sometimes a good drill in self-confidence and at- 
tention to ignore all mistakes in spelling at the time, 
— Any pupil below, noticing the mistake, may, when 
his turn comes to spell, spell the word which was 
missed, going above all who failed to note the mis- 
take. This device gets good results. Try it. 

4. Closely related to the above is the plan of passing a 

word correctly spelled just as if it were misspelled. — 
See if the next pupil will change the spelling with 
the hope of getting it right or spell it the same way 
with confidence. This is a splendid drill in self- 
reliance. 

5. Spelling matches. — These will never regain their for- 

mer interest in school and it is well that they do not, 
but they often serve a good purpose and are inter- 
esting. There are many varieties. Let us mention 
five kinds. 

(j) The method of choosing sides and spelling 
for captain. — Two pupils "choose up." These 
make some guess for first choice of spellers. 
The one beating in the guess — as for example 
at what page I have opened this book or sim- 
ilar guess — gets first choice. Then each 
chooses alternately, dividing the school into 
two sides. Those who "choose up" spell first. 
As fast as a pupil is "turned down" the next 
choice on that side takes his place. When one 
side is down it is best to spell through next 
time beginning with last to be chosen on each 
side. 
(2) The one objection to the plan above is that the 
best spellers do most of the spelling. — This 



A TALK ABOUT SPELLING. 135 

may be overcome by spelling by ''tally." The 
plan is to let the captains who ''choose up," as 
in the first method, stand in opposite corners of 
the room. Let one stand in the northeast 
corner of the room while the other stands in 
the southwest corner. As each pupil is chosen 
he takes his place on the left of his captain. 
When the choosing is over the pupils will 
stand in two opposing bodies on opposite sides 
of the room. Let all pupils on one side be 
called ''Number One'' and all on the other 
side be called ''Number Tzvo." Each pupil is 
to keep this number no matter where or in 
what position he may be while the spelling is 
going on. Then two reliable pupils, one from 
each side, are chosen to keep "tally." You are 
now ready to begin the spelling. Suppose you 
begin with the captain on side "Number One." 
He spells the word correctly and crosses the 
room and takes his place at the foot of side 
"Number Two." As he crosses the floor he 
calls out in distinct tones "Number One." The 
pupils who are keeping "tally" give side "Num- 
ber One" one credit or "tally" by placing a 
straight line in the column headed "Number 
One." The spelling then continues down 
side "Number One." If a word is missed the 
the next below spells it and passes up the same 
as in the ordinary oral spelling class. When 
the last in side "Number One" has spelled 
you pronounce the next word to the first or 
captain of side "Number Two." He spells 
the word and crosses the room, calling out dis- 
tinctly as he crosses, "Number Two," and side 



136 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

"Number Two" gets a "tally." By missing 
words you will notice that soon the pupils 
from the different sides are all mixed up. You 
see also that the best spellers will gain as they 
pass above those who miss. The best spellers 
will then cross the room oftenest, thus calling 
their number and giving the most credits to 
their side. 

It takes but a moment to get the sides 
started to spelling when you have studied the 
plan. The spelling can be continued indefi- 
nitely. The side that gets the most "tallies" 
is winner. Pupils will take great interest in 
it. The poorest spellers get as much practice 
in spelling as the best ones. You will find it 
in every way practical just as soon as you and 
the pupils understand the plan well. Another 
advantage is that if you desire two persons 
may pronounce at the same time without con- 
fusion, and thus double the amount of practice 
in spelling in the same time. 

(5) Let the class stand. — Pronounce a word to 
the first pupil, and let the second spell a word 
beginning with the last letter of the word 
spelled by the first pupil. Let the third pu- 
pil spell a word beginning with the last letter 
of the word spelled by the second pupil, etc. 
If a pupil misspells a word, fails to think of 
a word or spells a word previously spelled, he 
must be seated. This is a good drill not only 
in spelling but in thinking of new words and 
for increasing the pupil's vocabulary. 

(4) Let each pupil name and spell a word of one 



A TALK ABOUT SPELLING. ^37 

syllable. — A word of two syllables. A word 
of three syllables, etc. 
(5) Let the class stand while the teacher gives 
the first pupil one of a class of words. — The 
pupil spells the word, and then pronounces 
another word of the same class of words to the 
second and so on. If the pupil misses the 
word, or fails to name another word of the 
same class, he is seated. Numerous classes 
of words may be given, suited to the grade, the 
pupils or to the time. Here are a few sug- 
gestive lists. The teacher can readily plan 
others: i. Domestic animals. 2. Fruits. 3. 
Trees. 4. Flowers. 5. Birds. 6. Minerals. 
7. Furniture. 8. Articles made of iron. 9. 
Articles made of wood. 10. Names of cities. 
II. Names of countries. 12. Names of per- 
sons. 
11. The Written Method. — The written method of 

teaching spelling is now very largely used. It has the 

following advantages : 

1. Pupils learn to spell more rapidly by sight than 

by sound. 

2. In after life we use spelling only when writing. 

3. Each pupil gets to spell more words in a written 

recitation than in an oral recitation in spelling. 

4. All pupils are kept busy during the recitation pe- 

riod. 

5. Pupils may examine their mistakes and correct 

them. This impresses the correct form more 
clearly upon their minds than to simply correct 
them orally. 

6. Written spelling is a more accurate test of scholar- 

ship than oral spelling. 



138 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

The principal objection made to the written method 
of the recitation in speUing is that it requires more time 
than the oral. This can be obviated by selecting only 
the more difficult words for spelHng in the recitation. 
Much time is wasted in the study of the spelling lesson. 
Unless taught otherwise, pupils will spend just as much 
time "studying" the easy, familiar words in the lesson 
as the more difficult ones. No greater good can be done 
than to teach pupils how to study the lesson. As soon 
as the pupil knows how to spell a word, and knows that 
he knows how to spell it, he should eliminate it from 
the lesson and center his attention upon those of which 
he is not sure. If the teacher remembers that it is not 
always necessary to spell all the words in the lesson 
the written method will appear more rational. 

The written method also admits of less variation in 
the recitation than the oral method. The two methods 
usually used are the blackboard and the blank book 
method. Let the class pass to the blackboard. When 
the board is clear, the class faces the teacher, who quick- 
ly divides them into two or more sections by pointing 
to the pupils rapidly and numbering, first, second; first, 
second; first, second; etc. This separates the sections 
and lessens the probability of copying. He then pro- 
nounces the words, naming the section and following 
by the word for that section at once. Pronounce as rap- 
idly as the pupils can spell the words. Never let pupils 
get into the habit of snoozing over the spelling lesson 
either in recitation or in study. He should write the 
word correctly the first trial. No communication should 
be permitted. When the words are spelled, the pupils 
may move one space either to the right or the left and 
correct the work of another pupil, marking the grade. 

When pupils use blank books, the words may be 



A TALK ABOUT SPELLING. ^39 

written in vertical columns, and each word numbered. 
If no special book is used it will be well to use paper 
just large enough to spell one lesson on a page. No 
communicaton is allowed, and when the pupil is done 
writing the word he quietly raises his right hand to indi- 
cate to the teacher that he is ready for the next word. 
The teacher can then judge when to pronounce the next 
word from the number of hands raised. Unless the class 
is very large it is best for the teacher to do the correct- 
ing. If the class is large, the papers may be collected 
and redistributed. Wrong words are checked and grades 
marked. Keep a list of the words misspelled and drill 
on them from time to time. Have each pupil correct his 
mistakes daily and keep a Hst of the words which he has 
missed during the term, neatly and correctly written. 

One device I have found very successful is to select 
lists of common words often misspelled and words that 
pupils use and should by all means know how to spell. 
Place ten of these words on the board daily, and have 
pupils study them carefully for a few minutes. When 
the recitation time comes erase the words from the board 
and pronounce them to the class, having pupils write 
them. Then call upon pupils separately, having them 
to pass quickly and write the word on the board as he 
has it written on paper. At the end of the recitation the 
list of words will be written on the board again correctly. 
The teacher can keep marked on his original list the 
number of pupils who missed each word. This will 
serve a valuable purpose in review and drill. Ten words 
are few, and yet if each pupil learned the spelling of ten 
words each school day, think what an increase in vocab- 
ulary it would mean in a few years. 

Any word having been used before may be given to 
the class at any subsequent lesson. The class is to be 



140 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

held responsible for knowing thoroughly all words of 
former lessons. 

A few cautions may not be out of place either in 
written or oral spelling. 

1. As a rule give one trial in spelling a word, and 

never more than two. The problem is to have 
the word so well known that the first trial is all 
that is needed. 

2. Pronounce distinctly, but do not, as a rule, pro- 

nounce the word but once. There may be ex- 
ceptions, but they should be few. 

3. Do not mispronounce a word in order that the 

pupil may spell it correctly. Do not say sep-a- 
rate to make sure the pupil gets an a in the sec- 
ond syllable. 

4. Have pupils spell in natural tones. If teachers 

could hear themselves pronounce a spelling les- 
son and hear their pupils spell it — if they could 
hear this as the outsider and disinterested per- 
son often hears it — they would soon reform and 
reform the pupils. 

5. Do not pronounce words to the class in the same 

order the class has used in studying them. 

6. It is a good rule to have each pupil pronounce 

the word distinctly before he tries to spell it. 
It insures you that the word is correctly under- 
stood and it serves to call the pupil's attention 
to the word, emphasizing it. If the pupil does 
not understand the word then is the time for the 
teacher to repronounce it. 



A TALK ABOUT SPELLING. H' 

In oral spelling the plan of having pupils pro- 
nounce each syllable correctly as it is spelled is 
a good one. I would not, however, urge that he 
should go back and pronounce all the syllables 
each time he adds a new one. There is some 
argument for it and some advantage in it, but 
the plan is rather cumbersome. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL. 

For generations arithmetic has held a prominent 
place in the school curriculum. Should you teach any- 
one or all of the first eight years of school work the 
teaching of arithmetic will be of practical interest to you. 
Even the most modern of school courses has not elim- 
inated arithmetic nor curtailed to any great extent the 
proportionate share of attention given to it. Most teach- 
ers will admit that the subject has been over-estimated, 
and that it is not of the great practical value popularly at- 
tributed to it. The man in business does not use the 
principles of arithmetic half so often as many believe. 
Outside of the four fundamental processes and the prin- 
ciples of percentage, the average merchant and trades 
people generally do not use much arithmetic. The use 
of mechanical means of adding, subtracting, multiplying, 
and dividing has become widespread. Few business men 
now depend upon adding long columns of figures men- 
tally. The adding machine is quicker and absolutely 
correct. 

Arithmetic has a practical value, but it is not its so- 
called practical value that is its greatest worth. Few 
subjects in our school course develop the mind in so 
many ways. Unless many of our newer subjects prove 
their worth even beyond the fondest hopes of many of 
their advocates, arithmetic must yet hold a prominent 
place in the school. It is the teacher's duty to teach 
it so as to make the best out of it for the child. 

I believe most teachers will agree that at present and 
in the past much time has been wasted in arithmetic. 



ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL. 143 

The results achieved do not justify the time spent. 
Whether these teachers will agree with me as to the 
reasons for this I am doubtful. To get teachers to ques- 
tion themselves on this point, and if possible to gain 
some time in this subject, else get better results for the 
time spent, is the purpose of this little talk. 

/. Our pupils lack intensity in the study. — I believe 
this is one of our greatest faults. We allow the pupils 
to get into bad mental habits. They snooze over the 
work. They put in too much time. Their thoughts are 
allowed to go wool-gathering. They grow into time- 
killers instead of learning clear, sharp business methods. 

2. Much time is lost in dry formalism. — We hold to 
the form and neglect the content. We seek the husks 
rather than the ear. Some formalism may be helpful, 
but to hold to it in all things is not only a waste of time 
but it weakens the thought power. I knew a graduate 
of a township high school, a bright boy and a boy in no 
way slow to grasp things, that had been so thoroughly 
drilled in the formal analyses of problems, following the 
dictum, "always teach your pupils to reason from many 
to one, and then from one to many," that after more than 
a year in a store he told me he was never certain of an 
account until he had written it out in formal fashion : 

1. If twelve eggs are worth i8 cents. 

2. One egg is worth 1-12 of 18 cents, which is 18-12, 
or I 1-2 cent. 

3. And 16 eggs is worth 16 times as much as one egg 
or 16 times i 1-2 cents, which is 24 cents. 

4. If eggs are 18 cents a dozen, 16 eggs are worth 
24 cents. 

It may have been logical reasoning, some of it may 
have been useful, but to grind formalism into a boy for 
a twelve year's course of study, by never allowing any- 



^44 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

thing to pass that was not "analyzed" was a loss of time 
and mental discipline. 

J. Pupils are not trained to read and grasp the condi- 
tions of problems. — Fifteen years' experience with high 
school pupils leads me to believe that their ability to un- 
derstand English causes a loss of time and results in 
arithmetic. Practice your pupils on problems without 
figures until they look for conditions rather than figures. 
Make numerous problems and let pupils tell you how to 
solve them. For example, 'If you have the length and 
the breadth of a rectangular field stated in yards, how 
will you fiad the number of acres it will contain?" If 
teachers would give all through the grades more atten- 
tion to problems without figures, pupils would accom- 
plish more when they come to using problems with fig- 
ures because they could grasp the conditions better. 

4. Teachers neglect the four fundamental processes. — 
It is not an uncommon thing for pupils in the advance 
grades or even in high school to be unable to add, 
subtract, multiply or divide with anything like rapidity 
and accuracy. I am told the superiority of the German 
schools in arithmetic comes very largely in the thorough 
and accurate manner in which pupils are held to a mas- 
tery of the four fundamental operations in the first four 
years. When the advanced work is reached pupils are 
not handicapped by inaccurate results. 

5. Pupils are not taught to grasp each new subject 
and its purpose, hozu it is like and hozv it differs from 
the subject that precedes it. — Before beginning the 
new subject they should take an inventory of what they 
already know of the new subject and then the teacher can 
make clear to them the new things to learn. When the 
subject is complete they have a grasp of it as a whole. 
Many of our newer and most popular text-books in 



ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL. H5 

arithmetic are weak — unpardonably weak — because of 
too close a devotion to the spiral and other methods that 
try to teach each process and division of the subject just 
so far and then return to it on the next trip around 
the auger in just such a time. The best results more 
frequently come from the teachers and the texts that 
teach one thing at a time. Then if the problems are 
well graded there is a growing power on the part of 
the pupil to master the text for himself. When a boy 
in my 'teens, I bought a book and solved the problems in 
an advanced arithmetic, getting from the effort more 
growth than any teacher could have gotten by using a 
text where the child must be led all the way or else is 
lost in a maze of uncertainties. Do not teach arithmetic 
in scraps and fragments if you want the pupils to under- 
stand it. Connect each new subject with those that 
precede, and give them the feeling of unity of the sub- 
ject. 

6. Teachers neglect mental arithmetic. — There was 
once a special time, set aside in the program for such 
study, now there is a tendency to neglect it even in 
connection with the written work in arithmetic. Noth- 
ing paves the way better for good work in written arith- 
metic than mental arithmetic. The teacher states the 
problem orally, the pupil states the conditions carefully, 
gives a good logical solution, and the result or conclu- 
sion. The long problems solved without the use of fig- 
ures is not so important as the clear statement of condi- 
tions. To multiply 746234 by 278 without making any 
figures is not half so valuable in mental arithmetic as to 
tell how to solve a problem, giving the reason for each 
step, without giving the numerical result. 

These, it seems to me, are the chief reasons why our 
results in the study of arithmetic are not richer. Now 



146 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

there should be three chief aims in teaching arithmetic. 
If these are accomplished, the pupil has not only the 
highest practical value of arithmetic, but the best and 
richest of the cultural value also. 

The first aim should he accuracy. — This accuracy 
should include not only accuracy in result, numerical re- 
sult, but accuracy in reasoning process, and accuracy in 
expression also. Mathematics is an exact science. Its 
great cultural value lies in its training in exact reason- 
ing. The arithmetic that does not give exact numerical 
results is poor — extremely poor. In fact, much of our 
work in arithmetic drills to poor standards. The boy 
who gets nine problems out of ten — even in routine drill 
work — is graded high. Suppose the boy goes into the 
store or the bank and makes one mistake in ten compu- 
tations — how long would he hold his job? He would 
pass, but it would be off the pay roll. Do we not make 
a mistake unless we hold up to pupils in all drill work a 
standard of absolute accuracy ? After the pupil has mas- 
tered the mechanical processes until he is accurate, make 
sure that he is accurate in reasoning process. Teachers 
often err here by confusing numerical results with proper 
thought results. If a field is 40 rods wide and 80 rods 
long, how many acres does it contain? After the pupil 
is accurate in the fundamental processes, the real food in 
this problem for the pupil is what is given, what is 
required, and how the results required may be obtained 
from what is given. It is the steps in the process, why 
and how they may be obtained — and not the numerical 
result that is wanted. After these steps are fully in 
mind, as a drill in the fundamental processes he may 
solve the problems and give you the answer in figures. 

The second aim of arithmetic is rapidity. — This is 
the age of electricity. Speed counts. Time is money. 



ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL. 147 

We have no time for frills. The clearest, quickest, most 
direct processes are the best. Get the correct results 
and get them quickly. The person who can do this is at 
a premium, the person who cannot do it is at a discount. 
Teach pupils to concentrate the attention upon the prob- 
lem, shutting out all thought of irrelevant things. This is 
discipline as well as training for good results. Strive to 
keep your pupils from slothful habits in written or men- 
tal arithmetic. The habit grows and lessens results as 
well as wastes time. 

The third aim of arithmetic is neatness. — This is less 
important than the other two, but it is important and 
should not be neglected. It was made a shibboleth by 
teachers in the past. The form and neatness counted for 
more than the thought. Manuscripts wxre carefully 
bound to show the beauty and neatness of the work. 
Not long ago in a private school I saw exhibited with 
pride the work of pupils in the class in arithmetic, the 
chief merit of which was the faultless neatness of which 
it was placed on the paper. Ignorant people and those 
who are untrained in judging good work in school give 
credit for the form. Those who judge intelligently look 
for the content as well as the form. Teach pupils to 
orderly arrangement of work. The visitor in the school- 
room, if familiar with the processes of arithmetic, should 
have no trouble in following a solution on the blackboard 
or paper. 

I cannot in the limits of this chapter go into detail 
of how particular subjects are taught. Your teaching 
should center about these three aims. Any method or 
device that helps any one of these is helpful. Center 
your energies upon the essential things. Train pupils 
to careful, accurate, rapid work. See that principles and 
processes are made clear, but do not waste time trying 



H^ TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

to develop the processes down in the grades where the 
children are and should be interested in the memory 
work. Do not fool away time on the process of devel- 
oping the multiplication table and let pupils leave the 
subject without being able to give the multiplication ta- 
ble. It may be useful to the child to know how to 
find how many six times seven are by using chalk 
marks or counters. The one thing that must not be 
neglected is to make sure that the child knows that six 
times seven are forty-two. The results are the practi- 
cal things. 

The first four years in school should make the pupils 
able to add, subtract, multiply and divide, and it should 
enable them to do this quickly and accurately. If I 
could get a class proficient in these — up to my standard 
of proficiency — at the end of the fourth year, I should 
give them a thorough knowledge of the practical arith- 
metic by the end of the seventh year and they would 
have the eighth year for algebra or commercial arith- 
metic. 

A principal of one of the most thorough and reliable 
business colleges of which I know told me that his great- 
est trouble in a commercial course was to hold the stu- 
dents down to a regular systematic drill in the funda- 
mental processes of arithmetic. The trouble was that 
they could not add accurately and quickly. Their re- 
sults could not be relied upon. Many of them he kept 
two periods of thirty minutes each daily on rapid calcu- 
lations in fundamental processes. 

See that your pupils get correct ideas of number. 
Children think figures instead of number. Two dollars 
to many is a figure two with a dollar mark to the left. 
Two feet is a figure two with ft. to the right. See that 
they think number rather than figure. This comes often 



ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL. H9 

by having them make figures before they can use num- 
bers. 

Teach ideas instead of words. One-half does not 
mean a fraction to many pupils — it means the figure one 
above the figure two with a line between. Do not con- 
fuse a fraction with the manner in which a fraction is 
expressed. Principles should precede rules and pupils 
should comprehend these principles. I am even old-fash- 
ioned enough to believe that often, very often, pupils 
should be asked to commit the definitions and principles 
and rules as given in the book, but the language and 
purpose of these same definitions, principles and rules 
should be understood. The fault of the old plan was not 
that pupils were to commit definitions but that the pupils 
failed to comprehend the language and meaning of the 
definitions. 

See that each new subject is properly related in the 
child's mind with the subject that preceded it. It will 
then become one step of the ladder, something specific 
and definite in the child's mind. When they study deci- 
mals they should be able to recall and use any principles 
learned when studying common fractions. When they 
learn percentage there is little n^w to learn if they apply 
their knowledge of decimals. If percentage is well 
learned there is little else to learn in interest. 

These principles applied carefully will make your 
teaching of arithmetic more fruitful. It will save you 
time to do the more important work. Many teach- 
ers tell me it is hard for them to keep children inter- 
ested in the drill and abstract work. They find it hard 
to keep pupils interested in addition until they become 
accurate and rapid in results. I have never found it so. 
In fact, I have always found the abstract drill problems 
to be the most fascinating work. The only thing neces- 



ISO TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

sary is to call into play the spirit of contest or rivalry. 
Take an excellent test for reviewing and drilling on 
the tables. 

Suppose pupils have learned all the combinations up 
to 100. Suppose they have been drilled on adding by 
endings and the thing the class needs is practice. Some 
such device as this will make splendid practice. Draw 
a circle on the blackboard. On the circumference of the 
circle write the numbers 6, 9, 5, 7, 8, 11, 9, 4, 5. Then 
in the center of the circle write some number, let us say 
7. To show what is to be done with the numbers write a 
plus mark before the seven. That will show that seven 
is to be added to each of the numbers on the circum- 
ference in rapid succession, the pupil calling the result 
John is given a pointer to pass to the board and call the 
result. He will point to each of the numbers written 
above calling the result after adding 7 to it, as 13, 16, 12, 
14, 15, 18, 16. II, 12. Time John in giving the answers. 
Then send Mary to the board and see if she cannot beat 
him. The rivalry will be intense. Interest will be at 
fever heat and drill will become a game and a pleasure. 
Place a sign of multiplication before the seven and 
you have the whole drill changed in a moment from addi- 
tion to multiplication. In the same way it can be 
changed to subtraction or to division. Change your 
numbers as soon as the pupils begin to repeat the results 
from memory of position. 

Baseball terms and other things may add spice and 
awaken some of the sleepy boys that have never taken 
an interest. If he makes a mistake it may be called a 
foul, if he does not get far without a mistake he is out 
on first, etc. In the same way you may have an auto- 
mobile race. The circles may well be thought of as 
the automobile and try which can beat giving the results. 



ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL. 15^ 

Should some one fail to give the correct results his auto- 
mobile breaks down. A little ingenuity of the teacher 
will keep the drill work on abstract number and the 
learning of the tables a fascinating game instead of a 
continuous grind. 

The spirit of the contest can be profitably used in all 
subjects of arithn?etic by means of the ciphering match. 
Perhaps all teachers have used the ciphering match as a 
stimulus to two of the great aims in teaching arithmetic, 
accuracy and rapidity. Nothing will excel it in this. To 
those who have not tried a ciphering match the following 
directions will make it clear as to method. The more 
you use it and study the results on the arithmetic work 
of your school the more you will come to value it. 

The ciphering match may be between members of the 
same class or between different classes, or the whole 
school may be divided into two classes by choosing up, or 
the teacher may call on pupils on any order he chooses. 
You may state in advance what subjects may be used in 
the match at a giv^n time. To begin with it is well to 
limit to addition. Later it may be any one of the four 
fundamental processes. Then it makes a splendid re- 
view test when the class has completed any particular 
subject or group of subjects. Then to encourage them 
to keep well up on all subjects completed it is a good 
plan to allow them to choose from any subject over 
which the class have passed during the year. Short 
problems make the best drill for the ciphering match. 

Send the two "captains," if the school has chosen 
up, to the board. Read them a problem. The first to 
call the answer turns the other one down. Make calling 
of the answer the test, as it relieves you of watching them 
so closely. It is best to have another arithmetic or a 
list of problems so that you will not lack for problems. 



152 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

As the next pupil passes to the board he has the right 
of choice of subject and calls this as he passes to the 
board. He may choose a subject in which the first 
pupil is known to be weak or one perhaps in which he 
himself is considered strong. The choosing of subjects 
is a fine stimulus to keeping up in review all subjects 
previously gone over. 

Do not give long, involved, complex problems. The 
purpose of the ciphering match is drill on fundamentals 
and accuracy and quickness in getting results. Long 
problems kill interest. If one class is pitted against an- 
other or if the school is divided into two parts it is easy 
to determine the victor. The individual who turns the 
most down is the victor in one sense and then keeping 
a score of which side turns the most down is often a 
good plan. 

The best results of the ciphering match is the volun- 
tary work and drill you get from the pupils in prepara- 
tion. They will time themselves. They will practice to 
see who can solve the most problems in a given time, 
they will solve problems at home or meet other pupils at 
a neighbor's house and get as much enjoyment out of 
it as they would at card-playing and more profit. I have 
seen scores of boys quickened and interested permanently 
in arithmetic from the ciphering match. Pupils quit 
snoozing over their work and try to go direct for re- 
sults. Try a ciphering match a few times this year — - 
often enough to get the pupils thoroughly acquainted 
with the plan and see if you and they do not both feel 
that It is profitable. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

TEACHING LITERATURE. 

Literature, History, Algebra, Civil Government— 
these have been favorite subjects of mine. The teach- 
ing of each has brought me pleasure. Perhaps litera- 
ture in many schools is most neglected. I wish that I 
might say something which would call the attention of 
teachers to this subject. Let us discuss briefly the prin- 
ciples that should be made clear to the class and then 
apply these to that beautiful poem of Lowell's: "The 
Vision of Sir Launfal." This poem has been reprinted 
in numerous cheap editions, and no teacher but can af- 
ford a copy and secure a copy for each of his class. 

The successful teacher of literature must believe in 
his subject. He must believe with his whole heart that 
to lead a pupil to the proper appreciation of a piece of 
pure literature is to place that pupil on a higher spiritual 
plane ; that it will lift that pupil above much that is low 
and groveling and vicious, and give to him a constant 
companion and monitor, which, like Copperfield's Agnes, 
always points upward. 

The teacher of literature must have read critically 
much of the best literature. He must be especially fa- 
miliar with the particular selections he is to teach. He 
must know the selection in its bearings. He must have 
studied it earnestly and critically, and in addition he 
must have planned how he can best present it to his 
plass so that they may get most out of it. Less than this 
is apt to make the study of literature in the school a 
mere farce. 



^54 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

But what is pure literature? By what criterion do 
we draw the line between literature and other forms of 
writing? What distinguishes pure literature from the 
news article? What distinguishes literature from the 
statements of history or of scientific truths? I should 
reply that the constructive energy of pure literature is 
"universal, ideal, emotional life." 

Pure literature must he universal. — Lowell tells us 
that a literary man cannot air his private liver complaint 
to the public. He also gives us his conception of litera- 
ture in another place. ''Literature that loses its mean- 
ing, or the best part of it, when it gets beyond the par- 
ish steeple, is not what I understand by literature. To 
tell you when you cannot fully taste a book that it is 
because it is too thoroughly national, is to condemn the 
book. To say it of a poem is even worse, for it is to 
say that what should be true of the whole compass of 
human nature is true only to some north-and-by-half- 
east point of it. I can understand the nationality of 
Firdusa when, looking sadly back to the former glories 
of his country, he tells us that 'the nightingale still sings 
old Persian.' I can understand the nationality of Burns 
when he turns his plow aside to spare the rough burr 
thistle, and hopes he may sing a song or two for dear 
old Scotie's sake. That sort of nationality belongs to a 
country of which we are all citizens — that country of the 
heart that has no boundaries laid down on the map." 

Literature must he ideal. — The lessons it brings are 
the ideals of the soul's possibilities. It quickens in the 
individual soul the inspirations that are universal. The 
beautiful friendship of Damon and Pythias is above our 
selfishness — an ideal lifting us above ourselves, creating 
in us higher aspirations and showing us our own possi- 
bilities. There are, it is true, various degrees of ideal- 



TEACHING LITERATURE. 155 

izations. Heroism may be idealized and uplifting and 
yet not be to the degree of idealization in Enoch Arden. 
The strength and beauty of women's devotion may be 
worthy of emulation and yet not reach the standard of 
Evangeline. 

Literature must be emotional. — It deals more with 
the heart than with the head. The emotions of literature 
are of various kinds, but these may be all summed up in 
the emotions of spiritual freedom. The soul is constant- 
ly struggling to free itself from bondage, and every time 
a limitation is removed the soul leaps with joy. In 
this lies much of the educative power of literature. The 
all-inclusive pleasure of literature is the soul's joy in its 
hopes and its possibilities of freedom. The reader, if 
he really reads, is forced to live for the time being at 
least the ideal life pictured in the literature, and thus from 
day to day his soul attains to higher levels. 

The .Vision of Sir Launfal. 

Let us now discuss "The Vision of Sir Launfal." 
This is a work of literary art, a gem from a master, 
beautiful in conception, beautiful in execution, and beau- 
tiful in its inspiration to higher life. The teacher who 
secures the proper conception of this poem by the pupil 
rings a rising bell in the dormitory of that child's soul. 
Methods of teaching may vary with the personality of 
the teacher. The best method of one teacher may or 
may not be the best method of another. It is hoped the 
following suggestions may be helpful to some, and if 
so, they were not written in vain. 

The following general suggestions may pave the way 
for a closer study : 



156 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

I. Study the legend of the "Holy Grail" carefully. 

2. In connection with the study of 'The Vision of Sir 

Launfal" read Tennyson's "Holy Grail" and 
"Idyls of the King," noting likeness and differ- 
ence. 

3. Have pupils read through the poem carefully until 

they catch the movement and the rhythm. It 
is as great a mistake to set a class to criticising 
a poem or picking to pieces and analyzing the 
first paragraph of a selection of literature be- 
fore they have read it as a whole as it would 
be to have them criticise a monument by having 
them examine one or two of the blocks of gran- 
ite at the quarry. 

4. Keep closely before the student the standard and 

tests of pure literature. 
The first step then in the study of "The Vision of Sir 
Launfal" — and the same would be true of any selection 
of literature — is to find the author's theme. The second 
step is to test this theme by the questions : 

1. Is it universal? 

2. Is it ideal ? 

3. Is it emotional? 

These tests will determine the class of literature to which 
it belongs. 

The theme of literature is its soul or purpose, but 
this soul must have a body. The writer of literature 
does not speak in abstract terms. He embodies the 
forms in concrete, visible forms. The ideal image is 
presented in the real, the universal in the individual, and 
these objective or concrete particulars become types or 
symbols of the abstract or universal. Thus Hester in 
"The Scarlet Letter" and Jean Valjean in "Les Misera- 
bles" are realizations of universal principles in human 



TEACHING LITERATURE. ^57 

nature. The building and the launching of the ship 
with Longfellow is typical of national Hfe. He who 
reads Evangeline and sees but Evangeline the individual 
loses most of the poem. Evangeline is the concrete in- 
dividual form or embodiment of the abstract and the 
universal — woman's devotion. To see the universal sym- 
bolized by the particular, to see Evangeline no longer as 
an individual, but as a type— an ideal to which our souls 
may aspire — gives life to the study of literature and 
makes it a monitor to our own soul. 

Language is the medium which carries the theme 
through the embodiment to the reader. In other forms 
of art, as in sculpture and painting, the embodiment 
stands alone and the reader must make out of it what 
he can. Literature, however, is more plastic. It may 
represent the change, the rate of progress or develop- 
ment. Language brings a vivid image before the mind, 
and may give the meaning of the image in terms of life. 
Literary language must be beautiful. Its interpreta- 
tion must yield aesthetic pleasure; not only aesthetic 
pleasure, but sensuous pleasure also. It must caress the 
ear. These pleasing qualities give rise to euphony, har- 
mony, rhythm, and rhyme in all its pleasing forms. 
It includes also alliteration and the balanced sentence. 
Language has both a form side and a sense side. It is 
the incarnation of thought, and the soul is indispensible 
to the body. Language also awakens sensuous pleasure 
by stimulating the imagination and the judgment. The 
connotation of language is often of more importance than 
the denotation. 

Now let us apply these principles more in detail to 
"The Vision of Sir Launfal." 



158 twenty talks to teachers. 

The Theme. 

The theme of the poem is charity. The foundation 
of charity is our feeling of kinship. Blood kinship is a 
strong bond and has been in all of man's history. The 
recognition of spiritual kinship has grown out of blood 
kinship. The prejudice of the Greeks against the barba- 
rian came from the denial of blood kinship, while they 
failed to recognize the higher spiritual kinship. For the 
same reason the Gentile and the Jew were enemies. 
Monotheism — one God, one Father of all — lies at the 
foundation of all true charity. No wonder the greatest 
of virtues is charity. It is 

"That thread of the all-sustaining beauty, 
Which runs through all and doth all unite." 

The theme of the poem is not apparent at first. The 
poet, like the organist, begins ''doubtfully and far away." 
This stanza is typical of the universal method of 
thought. We approach the definite through the vague 
and the indefinite. The stanza has no connection with 
the theme of the poem. It is simply a prelude, and serves 
to prepare the mood of the reader for what follows. 

In the second stanza the theme is the unconscious 
rising to higher life through the uplifting influences of 
nature about us — the winds, the mountains, the woods, 
and the sea. 

The theme of the third stanza is the cost of earthly 
things contrasted with God's gifts. Earth gets its price ; 
it is only heaven can be had for the asking. The theme 
of the next stanza is the power of a June day unto right- 
eousness. The general purpose of this beautiful descrip- 
tion of a June day is to bring the reader to a realization 
of the uplifting influences about him. The particular 
purpose is to furnish the immediate connection with Sir 
Launfal, in whom from this time the theme is to be 



TEACHING LITERATURE. 159 

embodied. Mark the highly idealized upward impulse 
of a June day. Even the clod climbs upward to a soul 
in the grass and flowers. 

The theme in Part L, except the last stanza, is selfish- 
ness — unconscious selfishness under the guise of a noble 
deed. The theme of the preceding is continued, and 
shows strongly by contrast the uncharitable element in 
Sir Launfal's character. His own life was so bright his 
heart could not be opened to the leper. Sorrow and re- 
verses must touch him and melt his selfishness. Unlike 
the bird, there is no song of sympathy in the heart of 
Launfal, and like the castle he rebuffed the sunshine 
and gloomed apart. Everything up to this point is uni- 
fied in the one idea of selfishness. The leper states this 
definitely. Heaven may be had for the asking, but we 
rebufif the gifts of heaven as the castle does the sun- 
shine. Sir Launfal gives alms only; the gifts of true 
charity must come, from the heart. The knight rode to 
do a noble deed, but he could have found the Holy Grail 
at his own castle gate had his heart gone with his gift. 
He was seeking the husk instead of the grain. The 
crusaders sought Christ by going to Jerusalem, and many 
yet seek Him in the mere external ceremonies of the 
church. Notice how the leper contrasts this false char- 
ity with the real: 

"But he who gives but a slender mite, 
And gives to that which is out of sight, 
That thread of the all-sustaining beauty, 
Which runs through all and doth all unite, 
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 
The heart outstretches its eager palms. 
For a god goes with it and makes it store 
To the soul that was starving in darkness before." 

Sir Launfal has realized the false charity; he is now 
to grow into the true; and that is the problem to be 



l6o TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

worked out in the life of each individual. It is the un- 
ceasing conflict between egoism and altruism, between 
the individual and the universal self. In this conflict 
there is a failure to recognize the self where the true 
self is found. Failing to see the divinity in things we 
fail to see ourselves in them. 

In the prelude to Part II. we have the inner beauty 
of life set over against the external form. It requires 
the chilling influences of winter to awaken the soul of 
Sir Launfal to the realities of life, to enable him to 
recognize his kinship to the leper. His act was a small 
one; little in the eyes of the world. He gave but a) 
mouldy crust and a drink of water, but 

"The Holy Supper is kept indeed 
In whatso we share with another's need ; 
Not what we give but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare ; 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me." 

If the pupils do not realize the theme, if they do not 
see it as universal in time and place — as good to-day as 
in time of knighthood, and as applicable to one individual 
as another — they have lost the best, in fact all, of the 
good of the poem. If they really read the poem they 
must live for the time being decidedly above the ordinary 
level of charitable feeling. 

The Embodiment. 
The theme is embodied in a person. Sir Launfal is 
not simply Sir Launfal the individual, but Sir Launfal 
the universal. He is the potential of what you and I 
may become. We know nothing and care nothing about 
the ordinary events of his life. Even the most matter- 
of-fact person cares nothing about when or where he 
was born. Age and clime do not concern us. We are 



TEACHING LITERATURE. l6l 

interested only in his growth in charity. The embodi- 
ment is not Sir Launfal only, but Sir Launfal with all 
his accessories, the castle, the leper, summer, winter, etc. 
Sir Launfal before the castle gate, confronted by the lep- 
er, stands boldly out in the foreground of the picture 
in the beginning, and the scene must be shifted until he 
stands confronted by the leper again — from June to 
December of life — and Sir Launfal, and not the leper, 
must change. 

The heavenly influences must bring knight and leper 
together so that each shall recognize their spiritual kin- 
ship, and in the beginning they are the extremes of hu- 
man life. The only ideal charity is the kind which has 
power to bring together the extremes of life, to show how 
the kinship in a person in the most abject and offensive 
condition of life. Sir Launfal is a knight, and the sworn 
duty of a knight is to do good to others and to protect 
and defend the weak. Here is the opportunity to do 
good to one who. needs help, but he fails utterly. He 
makes no sacrifice in giving gold; he does not share 
his life; he gives the gold in scorn. 

Sir Launfal, the proud, selfish knight, can never real- 
ize his kinship to the leper until his selfishness is over- 
come, until his heart is changed. He is uncharitable 
to an ideal degree, and this is still more idealized when 
we consider that the June day which inspired Launfal 
to the keeping of his vow was a free gift. The poet 
describes the June day until the reader feels its power 
unto higher living. The physical and the spiritual are 
blended, and to such a degree is the spiritual idealized 
that the reader consciously feels the uplifting impulse. 
The class that does not feel this uplifting impulse does 
not really read the poem. 



i62 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

The June day is called a perfect day. It is a time 
when earth is in tune with higher life. Every clod feels 
a stir of might, and such an idealized effect on the clod 
makes the reader reach and tower to a higher life. But 
Sir Launfal's selfishness makes him out of harmony 
with nature all about him. The little bird, deluged with 
summer, sings to the world : 

"His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings," 

but Sir Launfal's heart sings only to the wide world, if 
it sings at all. He does not respond to the quiet duty 
before him. Everything but Sir Launfal is upward 
striving; selfishness like a lodestone, is holding him 
down. At first it seems the poem lacks unity, but a 
careful study shows that the preludes have the closest 
relation to the theme. The uplifting influences of the 
free June day makes the selfishness of Sir Launfal all 
the greater. 

The castle is the embodiment of Launfal and selfish- 
ness. It, too, was besieged by the summer, but "lay 
like an outpost of winter, dull and gray." The draw- 
bridge dropped with a surly clang as the knight dashed 
forth, but the sunshine went out of his soul with a 
thrill as he beheld the leper. This picture is the embodi- 
ment of the emptiness of the outward forms of charity — 
the mere almsgiving. The picture of true charity is 
quite different. Sir Launfal and the leper meet again 
before the same castle wall and again the leper begs an 
alms. The chilling influences of life and the reverses of 
fortune have wrought a change in Sir Launfal, and he 
now listens to the "grewsome thing." He recognizes in 
him not only a kinship, but sees in him the image of 
Christ — the real Christ — while his life has been spent in 
seeking only the shadow of Christ. The external con- 



TEACHING LITERATURE. 163 

trast is as great as the spiritual contrast. Sir Launfal 
is now an old, bent man. There is no sign of Knight- 
hood — he is ''shelterless, shelterless, shelterless." 

The description of the little brook is, if possible, more 
delightful than that of the June day, and is the embodi- 
ment of Sir Launfal's present life. The reader feels 
the joy of the fullness of inner life independent of exter- 
nal circumstances. The warmth and comfort inside the 
castle is a striking contrast with the cold outside, and 
this expresses the condition of Sir Launfal. The inner 
life is now triumphant over the outer. Contrast the pic- 
ture of Sir Launfal leaving the castle, and Sir Launfal 
returning to the castle. In the first the outward life is 
triumphant over the inner. The external world is light 
with warmth and cheer. In the second it is cold and 
bleak and gloomy, while the ruddy glow comes from 
within. This growth is typical of the progress of the 
soul from the pride of youth and inexperience to the joy 
of the inner spiritual life of old age. It suggests also 
the historical moverrtent from external splendor of chiv- 
alrous deeds to inner Christlike charity ; the growth from 
symbolism to the thing symbolized. 

The class should study the embodiment until they 
feel: 

1. That the picture is accurate, vivid and full. 

2. That it makes its appeal to the inner life of sym- 
pathy and love. 

3. That there is perfect harmony between the real 
as presented in the picture and the ideal as potential 
in human nature. 

The Language. 

The pupils should scan the poem to catch the music 
of the verse. Notice the external mechanism, the Ian- 



164 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

guage and its power to awaken aesthetic pleasure. Note 
the freedom and variety of the structure. There is no 
monotonous jingle. Rhythm is the primary element in 
poetic form, and a return to it. There must be no fixed 
regularity in the departure and the return. Notice the 
flexibility in the rhyme, as "knowing" "growing," "ear" 
"near," "flowing," "sky" "by," "back" "lack," "chanti- 
cleer" "year," "crowing." 

The measure is as free and as playful as the rhyme. 
The iambic is the characteristic foot, but there is fre- 
quently variations by the use of the anapest. The tro- 
chaic foot is used occasionally at the beginning of the 
line. Notice the variations running through the poem 
and the variations in the length and structure of the 
stanzas. The more complex the movement of a poem, 
provided there is unity in it, the more music there is in 
it. Stanzas cut by the same form and pattern are arti- 
ficial and mechanical. 

The form of poetry, however, cannot be considered 
separate from the thought and sentiment expressed. Al- 
literation, unless it fit the form to the idea, is mere af- 
fectation. When the sentiment rises and falls or moves 
with varying rapidity, the form of the stanza must vary. 
The class should study the poem to see : 

1. If there is any conflict between the form and 
meaning. 

2. If the variation in form comes naturally with the 
variation of the sentiment expressed. 

Suggestion and allusion are well employed in the 
selections. The author utilizes the reader's knowledge 
of Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," the Bi- 
ble story of Moses and Sinai, Druid religion, and Tenny- 
son's "Idyls of the King," and he does it skillfully. He 
does not thrust it at the reader, but assumes the reader's 



TEACHING LITERATURE. 165 

intelligence, and the compliment is pleasing. The poems 
are few where we find the objects presented so com- 
pletely and transformed into spiritual types so perfectly. 
Even the clod climbs to a soul. Note the suggestiveness, 
the connotation, in "reaches" and ''towers," "groping 
blindly" and "climbing." All of them suggestive of the 
human soul's ascent to higher things. 

The poem is a unit. It is "universal, ideal, emotion- 
al." There is complete fusion of form and content, a 
rounded fullness, completeness and beauty which makes 
it a work of fine art. Do not let your class leave it un- 
til they have stored their minds with beautiful quotations 
. — gems of thought and sentiment, jewels of expression — 
which will bless and brighten and uplift them in after 
years. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE teacher's VACATION. 

Your school term has closed. Vacation is here. 
How shall you spend it? That is the question. 

Rest. That is the proper thing to do. Rest does 
not mean idleness, however. Why are you tired? The 
merchant works twelve months in the year, six days in 
the week and more hours in a day than you do? The 
farmer, the mechanic and others do the same. They are 
glad to get a week off once a year, and many of them 
do not get that. Why are teachers so completely worn 
out at the close of the term? Why are they so pale, so 
nervous? Why do they so often count the weeks, then 
the days, and at last the hours before the term ends? 
Is there a teacher of five years' experience who has not 
at some time been guilty of such counting? Is it the 
hard work? Is it the lack of agreeable surroundings? 
Is it want of pure air and exercise, or is it worry? 

Freed from anxiety, and to the lover of the work, 
teaching is neither dull nor exhausting. The actual men- 
tal energy spent in teaching by most teachers is not 
great. It is seldom that they give long continued men- 
tal effort to one subject during school hours. In fact, 
the worst drawback to teaching to one who seeks to be 
a scholar in the best sense of the term, is that his atten- 
tion is continually divided. He cannot concentrate his 
mind on one subject long enough. He must .divide his 
time between government and the teaching process. For 
this reason, those who wish to be scholars rather than 
teachers seek to teach in the universities rather than in 
the primary or secondary schools.- Here they may spe- 



THE teacher's VACATION. 167 

cialize. Here their class work is free from government 
proper. Their students are mature. The mature 
thought of the student stimulates the teacher and the in- 
vestigator. They are growing into ripe scholarship in- 
stead of directing younger pupils in the elements of sub- 
jects. 

We may safely say it is not the unusual amount of 
thought devoted to teaching that gives pallor to the cheek 
of so many teachers at the close of the year, nor do 
we believe it is altogether due to unpleasant surround- 
ings. School houses are in many places far from in- 
viting. Two or three churches with stained glass win- 
dows and pretty homes of comfort and refinement are 
often found near the most dilapidated old tumbled- 
down school house, and a shame it is. But the teacher 
who is master of the situation and a leader of children, 
can do much to overcome this. Clean buildings and 
grounds with some good walks and a few trees and 
flowers will follow as a result of a good teacher after a 
few years in almost any school. 

The teacher, too, usually secures room and board 
with a good family where they may have comforts equal 
or superior to their own home. Teachers are always 
welcome to the best society — it may not be the low- 
necked, high-heeled variety — but the best and most sub- 
stantial. The best homes welcome them as guests and 
the biggest fat apples are laid — an honest and worthy 
tribute — on the teacher's desk. Churches and societies 
in rural and village schools always welcome the teacher 
with pleasure, and the teacher is lacking in mixing 
qualities who does not get access to all the comforts and 
pleasures the community affords. Their standards may 
not be your standards, but their honesty and unconven- 
tionality will make up for much. One of the inexpress- 



i68 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

ible pleasures of teaching comes when you can lose your 
own selfishness in your own quiet devotion to duty in 
the community. The worn-out condition of the teach- 
er, if she has the ability to adapt herself to reasonable 
conditions, does not come from lack of congenial sur- 
roundings. 

Lack of fresh air and exercise may count for much. 
Many school-rooms are poorly ventilated. Teachers 
standing breathe more impurities than pupils seated. 
The windows should be slightly lowered at the top and 
the room frequently flushed with fresh air for the benefit 
of both teachers and pupils. Then most teachers do not 
take enough exercise. Do you play at recess ? Whether 
it is advisable to play with your pupils or not depends 
upon your own power. Can you play with pupils with- 
out sacrificing or compromising your dignity? Some 
persons can, and others cannot. Some gain the good will 
of pupils by playing with them, others lose it. You 
must know your own ability. Games in which you can 
excel usually count in your favor. Games in which the 
pupils can greatly excel you, are not apt to add to your 
standing or reputation among pupils. But whether you 
play or do not play you should spend an hour or two 
each day in exercise in the open air. A brisk walk to 
the postoffice, an hour of work in the garden or with 
flowers, or the care of chickens or anything which gives 
you exercise in the open air and calls your thoughts from 
the work of the day is beneficial. The work must be 
congenial, but the labor must not be so strenuous as to 
sap your vitality. It should be of everyday occurrence, 
and yet so that in extremely bad weather the time may 
be shortened. An hour of work in the open air in 
something in which you have a genuine interest will put 
life and vigor into your school work. 



THE teacher's VACATION. 169 

Worry kills. Relieved of all worry, the teaching pro- 
fession would be ideal, and yet worry springs almost all 
together from the imagination. The teacher goes to 
school in the morning scared for fear of trouble. A feel- 
ing of dread that something is going to go wrong, that 
some calamity is about to befall, hangs over the teacher. 
She fears to look out of the window or to step out on the 
playground for dread she will see something wrong. 
It is this dread, this feeling that something awful is 
going to happen, this worry which causes the pale face 
and the nervous condition of the teacher at the close of 
school. 

Then so many teachers never get the confidence of 
their school. They are looking for open defiance or 
open rebellion at any minute. They prowl about to find 
something going wrong. They tip-toe and sneak on the 
pupils, confident always that pupils are plotting against 
them. It is no wonder that pupils delight in annoying 
such a teacher. They stop the recitation time after time 
to reprimand Johnnie in the back part of the room. 
They pace the floor like a hyena in a cage, looking for 
trouble. Let me suggest that if Johnnie is disturbing 
the recitation to such an extent that something must 
be done that you let Johnnie do the walking instead of 
yourself, and let your rebuke or punishment be severe 
enough, and sincere enough, and complete enough, and 
yet reasonable enough, that you will never have to stop 
the recitation again to reprimand him. 

Good common sense and self-control should be 
brought to bear on your duties, and as an aid in making 
steady your nerves. As responsible as the school-room 
is, pupils are not going to run off with the building. 
Neither are they going to do anything unpardonably bad. 
Their youthful faults and follies will be forgotten by 



I70 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

you, and the neighborhood too, in a few years. So what 
is the use of wasting the nervous force and energy 
which ought to be directed towards the teaching process 
in needless worry for fear something will happen. 
You ask, "How can I help it?" You can help it: 
/. Use your will to control your mind. — You have 
• read of the soldier who found his knees tremb- 
ling. Stopping short and looking at them he 
said: ''If you knew where I was going to take 
you you would shake worse than that." By cen- 
. tering his mind upon other things he gained 
control of his shaking knees. You, by exert- 
ing your will, may learn to calm your fears. 
2. A large part of your nervousness comes from feel- 
ing that you a^e not well prepared for the work. 
— You fear that something will come up which 
you do not understand. You are not right sure 
whether you can answer the questions you are 
going to ask the class in to-day's lesson. You 
feel that the problems and questions of the 
school-room are going to come to you as a sur- 
prise. The best remedy for this is to study and 
plan and organize your knowledge of the sub- 
ject ; to read carefully and critically but with 
discrimination the plans, methods, devices and 
experiences of other teachers. These may be 
found in journals and books on methods and 
plans of teaching. 
5. Your vacation, while they should be free from 
worry and unnecessary work, may be seeding 
time for storing up many helpful things which 
will prevent worry in the future. — Read a few 
good thoughtful professional books. Question the 
plans and methods mentioned. Make clippings 



THE TEACHERS VACATION. ^7^ 

of those things which will help you in the fu- 
ture, and keep them in scrap-books, classifying 
these that you may readily turn to any topic 
wanted. What stores of knowledge, what 
amount of worry may thus be avoided by plan- 
ning for the future. Not only this, the plan- 
ning itself will give pleasure as its own reward 
at the time, with compound interest in the fu- 
ture. Think over and plan and systematize your 
work. Yes, I hear you say that you cannot plan 
then so that you can use it the next year. You 
must revise your plans, it is true. A plan is 
much more easily revised than constructed anew. 
No teacher can use a plan over and over with- 
out revision or adaptation to the individual class. 
But during vacation is the time to make collec- 
tions of material, storehouses as it were, to in- 
terest your class for next year. 
4. Do not neglect the rest and recreation and inspira- 
tion that comes from a week at the county insti- 
tute or a few weeks at a good summer school. — 
The acquaintances made, the inspiration received, 
the thought-producing ideas gained, and the feel- 
ing of professional fellowship engendered is 
worth many times its cost. With a vacation 
rightly used you may come out of your next 
school term with more energy and more phys- 
ical strength. 
It is the worry of the school-room that kills. Teach- 
ers must overcome the worrying habit or succumb to 
its baneful influence. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE teacher's VIEW OF LIFE. 

Of all the things that indirectly affect your teach- 
ing, as well as your own personal happiness, nothing is 
of such importance as your view of life. It gives color- 
ing to your every act. It is a background from which 
other things must take their tint. It shapes your views 
and determines your actions unconsciously upon hun- 
dreds of the less important things of life. It makes you 
a long-faced pessimist, sour and grouchy, or it makes 
you an optimist, bright and cheery. 

One^s view of life is not always entirely his own 
choosing. Health, family, friends, success, may affect 
your view of life and in turn be affected by this same 
view of life, but your view of life can be consciously cul- 
tivated. You are what you are from three sources. 

First, your inheritance. Color, race, nationality, phys- 
ical features, natural talent, etc., are not of our own 
choosing. These are for us or against us. We are 
bound by these fetters and yet we cannot be held moral- 
ly accountable for them. They determine in a greater 
or lesser degree our future in many things. Our moral 
responsibility would make it our duty to accept without 
pride or regret, without boasting or apology, without 
compliment or complaint, our God-given, parent-inherited 
possibilities. From these we are to make the best we can. 

Second, You are what you are from your environ- 
ment. In no marked measure are we responsible for our 
environment in early life. While it leaves its indelible 
traces on us, it is not of our own choosing. No man is 
individually responsible for his own birthplace nor boy- 



THE teacher's VIEW OF LIFE. ^73 

hood home. Whether in the busy marts of trade or the 
seclusion of a frontier farm, whether in primitive Pata- 
gonia or gay Paris — it may affect his life and ideas and 
attainments, but for this there is little credit due him as 
an individual because it was not of his own choosing. 

The potent influence of environment and opportunity 
on the individual is the hope of the teacher and the 
reformer. To improve this the state spends its millions 
upon schools, education, good roads, mail service, sanita- 
tion, etc. The great reformers of the ages have been 
true to their highest ideals because of their faith in their 
ability to improve the conditions of the masses of man- 
kind. Our schools and reformatories are based upon 
the same faith. We can improve the race by improving 
the environment of the young. A careful study and 
contemplation of the effects of improved environment 
upon the life of the individual should nerve any teacher 
to the highest effort. 

Third, You are what you are largely by your own 
efforts. The mature man should be self-directive. Cir- 
cumstances, inheritance and environment may limit him, 
but he grows in strength and courage in fighting and 
overcoming this environment. The ripened fruit of edu- 
cation is intelligent individual self-direction. It is the 
aim and end of a liberal education. It is the goal to 
which all else in education should direct. 

We believe, then, that it is possible for the individual 
— the thinking, liberal-minded individual, the teacher 
trained to see not only the highest ideals of education 
but to understand the principles and laws of mental 
growth to attain such ideals — we believe that it is possi- 
ble for such a person to shape in a very large measure his 
view of life. Upon the way he looks at life depends 
largely his health, happiness and success. 



174 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

"As a man thinketh, so is he." This has been the 
thought of the great rehgious reformers of the ages. 
Buddha and Christ, and all that go between, agree in 
this one particular. They differ in what to believe, but 
all agree that one's innermost belief shapes and deter- 
mines his life and final reward. With Milton, I believe 
that ''mind can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of 
hell." With these statements let us see if we can make 
more clear how one's view of life will enter the practical 
affairs of the teacher and make for them of teaching 
either a paradise or purgatory. 

Contrast these views of farming — ^the first a farmer 
only; the second a man on a farm. The one is nar- 
rowed in his view of life to his cabin and forty acres., 
Each day is a ceaseless grind. The old statement that 
there is nothing new under the sun is true so far as he is 
concerned. His soul and life are dwarfed and swiv- 
eled. He ekes out a miserable pittance day by day. 
Growling and miserly and grudgingly he makes his sim- 
ple exchanges at the country store. He haggles, and 
frets and stews over prices, seeking a low and sinister 
motive in every man's transaction but his own. Of all 
men he thinks himself the most besought and hard 
pressed. Day after day he spends in absolute idleness 
because he can find nothing worth doing. His cattle, 
his corn and his surplus supplies are so many cents saved 
for the winter's clothing. The weeds grow up to his 
front door, his fences are unkept, his stables are fall- 
ing down, and from the broken window panes hang "the 
signal rags of shiftlessness." Life holds for him no hope 
save the sordid things of life. Narrowed and dwarfed 
and ignorant he goes his ceaseless round. No beauty 
for him in the sky overhead or in the flower at his feet. 
The storm cloud appeals only as it may break the drouth 



THE TEACHER S VIEW OF LIFE. I7S 

or blow down the crops. His thoughts and his vocab- 
ulary are bounded by his daily ceaseless round of small 
economies. Healthy, hearty, his view of life is so nar- 
row that what God intended for a man is little more 
than a thing. 

His neighbor measures all by its market value. The 
money it will bring — this to him would measure anything 
less than a soul and would tempt him to sell his soul. 
He buys land to raise corn to feed hogs to buy more land 
to raise more corn to feed more hogs ; to buy more land 
to raise more corn to feed more hogs to buy more land 
and thus the endless possession goes until he is gathered 
to his fathers and his children have a chance to spend 
his earnings often in riotous living. His view of life is 
broader than the first. He learns that there is a differ- 
ence in the quality of corn and hogs. To produce con- 
tinuous crops he must protect and build up the land. 
The stock of hogs and the care they get make a difference 
in the profits. His view of life is bounded by the al- 
mighty dollar. He is not hopeless, as he has interests 
outside himself. 

Contrast these with the man of liberal mold on the 
farm. The farm is to him his apportioned part of God's 
green earth, a place to live and to be happy. An ever- 
changing scene and view makes life on the farm to him 
a continuous panorama of beauty. The blueness of the 
sky, the brightness of the stars, the balmy breezes, the 
landscape view, even the heat of summer and the cold 
of winter add zest to his living. He is ever thankful for 
sunshine or showers, pure air and fresh water, health 
and exercise — thankful that his is an environment of taste 
and beauty. He is busy and he is happy. His mind is 
centered on other things but the dollars, and the comforts 
come as a side line and without worry or fretting on his 



176 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

part. He rises with the lark to give another touch here 
and there that will add to the growing of the crops or 
the beauty of the home. He feels that by his labor he 
is not only keeping his wife and family but helping to 
feed the hungry millions of mankind. 

What a difference in the spirit of the man who feels 
that he is feeding the hungry millions of the earth, help- 
ing in God's great plan of civilization and enlightenment 
and the miserable miser who seeks but shade and shelter ! 

Your view of life changes the complexion of the 
things about you. It puts spirit and energy into the 
most humdrum tasks. A necessary work is an honorable 
work. Do that which your ability and your environment 
makes necessary. Do it with cheerfulness and a will. 
Envy no man his success until you are willing to pay 
for it what he has paid. By paying the price you can 
win success for yourself. But success is not always 
measured in dollars and cents. Teach yourself to view 
life and labor in its broader light, and you will have 
found the philosopher's stone that dignifies labor well 
done, arid draws pleasure from any honorable occupation. 

To deify your own work is the way to get pleasure 
and growth out of it. Forget as far as possible the 
daily wage. Let the carpenter see himself helping to 
build and improve the homes of mankind and he is 
ashamed of shoddy work. The street sweeper should 
glow with civic pride. His work is as essential as that 
of any man. When he realizes this, his work is then 
not drudgery. He feels the worth of his work. He 
feels that he is making his city the cleanest, the bright- 
est, the healthiest and the most beautiful in the world. 
When he turns at the end of his beat to see behind him a 
street immaculate, there swells in him a worthy pride of 
his work and his worth, a thrill as pardonable and as 



THE teacher's VIEW OF LIFE. ^11 

justifiable as that in the mayor's breast as he reviews his 
uniformed police. The teamster with his load of coal, 
dirty and begrimed though he may be, should forget his 
toil and drudgerj in the conviction that he is helping 
humanity to keep warm while in turn he is earning an 
honest living and the comforts of home for himself 
and family. 

Let the washerwoman, bending over her tub, feel that 
her work is not only honorable, but necessary. Except 
for her, or others doing her work, humanity in a few 
months time would be in a pitiful plight, and our present 
civilization could not long exist. Dignify your own lit- 
tle niche in life. See in all things the hand of an infinite 
power, shaping and directing the destiny of man and then 
no work will be drudgery to you. 

You get out of life what you put into it. Measure 
and it is measured back to you. Joy, sunshine, cheer- 
fulness, obedience, these are reflections of yourself. The 
brightest colors, the most beautiful harmonies, are self- 
created products of your own mind. We see what we 
look for, we hear what we listen for, we get what we 
give. We must lose our life in our work if we are to 
find it again renewed and more fruitful in the lives of 
our pupils. Love our pupils and they will love us in 
return. See good in everybody and the goodness in 
them will rise up then to greet the goodness in us. 
Have beauty in our own life and we shall see beauty in 
the life about us — the rainbow, the storm cloud, the land- 
scape, the sparrow's song, the brooklet's ripple, will 
all find an inspiring response in our natures. 

Grouch and the world is grouchy. Fault-find and 
others will find fault. Distrust and others will not have 
confidence in us. The world and all things about us is 
one huge mirror from which our own image is being 



178 TWENTY TALKS TO TEACHERS. 

reflected back to us. If we want to change the image 
begin to consciously build up in ourselves a bigger, 
brighter, better view of life and we shall begin to see 
bigger, brighter, better images reflected back to us. 

As a teacher learn to look on life with a healthy opti- 
mism. Get a world view of humanity in its progress. 
Recognize yourself as a force — infinitely small perhaps, 
but a necessary force in the triumphant march. Dollars 
and cents are necessary to you to fill to perfection this 
place — but over and above all money, sweeter and more 
lasting, is the lives you can reach, the good you can do, 
the pleasure you can inspire, the kindlier feelings you 
can cultivate in your pupils. Cheered, upheld, inspired 
by such thoughts as these, no community will be uninter- 
esting, no school will be unworthy your best efiforts, no 
healthy, hearty, happy child but will stand before you an 
instrument of infinite possibilities. Knowing what notes 
to strike you can place it in harmony with God and the 
universe. 

To see life in its larger views, to live life on a higher 
plane, to lift others to this larger life is the opportunity 
of the true teacher. Think you that teaching is dull? 



NOV 30 r l«08 



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